PS 3539 
.H659 
B6 
1909 
Copy 1 




Book___JAfe5^M. 



Gopight^". 



^03 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



^ "^OOK^ OF HOUT^ 



by 
Ellen Thompson 



3^w York 

igog 






Copyright, 1909, by]. M. Bowles 



Printed by the Forest Press, New Turk 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoD'tes Received 

JUN \ l«^i* 

opyngnt Entry 



CLASS A A^C No. 






S«/ Friendship is a nobler things — 
Of Friendship it is good to sing. 
For, truly, when a man shall end. 
He lives in memory of his friend. 



THESE papers were selected from Miss 
Thompson's notes for her "hours," 
talks on literature given in and about 
Boston for the last twenty years of her life, and 
which had come to be, from her large and per- 
manently devoted audiences, one of the insti- 
tuted charms of culture in the city. 

A skilled working love for books is too valu- 
able an influence to let die. 



The Friendliness of Books i 

In Praise of London: Charles Lamb's 

Letters and Essays 17 

Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends in 

East Anglia 49 

Oxford's Walks and Gardens 93 

From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 133 

Some Irish Villages That I Know 178 



THE FRIENDLINESS OF BOOKS 



ALTHOUGH I were to talk to you long 
and earnestly on the friendliness of 
^ books, I could not sufficiently celebrate 
their dear friendliness. It is impossible to tell all 
the joy that comes from the companionship of 
books — that is something that one must feel. 

But I shall like to tell you many reasons why 
books are dear to me. I cannot remember when 
books began to be my friends, because I have no 
memory of learning to read; ever since I can re- 
member books have been my greatest delight. 

My education was somewhat like Bridget 
Elia's, and here at the very threshold of this 
hour, let me tell you that two of your dearest 
friends, if you're reading girls, will be Charles 
and Mary Lamb. If you already know them, 
you may rest assured that they are your lifelong 
friends. In the essays which he signs Elia, 
Charles Lamb always calls his sister " my cousin 
Bridget," and this is the way he tells us that she 
read: "Her education In youth was not much 



A Book of Hours 

attended to; and she happily missed all that 
female garniture which passeth by the name of 
accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by ac- 
cident or design, into a spacious closet of good 
old English reading, without much selection or 
prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair 
and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, 
they should be brought up exactly in this fash- 
ion. I know not whether their chances in wed- 
lock might be diminished by it ; but I can answer 
for it, that it makes (if the worst comes to the 
worst) most incomparable old maids.*' 

In my youth, I was tumbled into a closet of 
good English reading, and it was my chief de- 
light. So much is it my habit and my pleasure to 
read, that when I enter a room, the first thing 
for which my eye instinctively looks is a book. 
I don't like to sleep in a room where there are 
no books. In my own room, I open my eyes every 
morning to my friends on the shelves, hundreds 
of them, and say, " There you are, old friends," 
and I like to fancy they are not insensible to my 
greeting. 

When I have a house of my own, it is to con- 
sist principally of one large room, which shall 
be living room, dining room and library. I quite 
2 



The Friendliness of Books 

know how it will be furnished — long low book- 
cases and leaded windows above, a big, big fire- 
place, and when my friends visit me, we shall sit 
at table and chat about books and book-folk, and 
when playful controversies arise about this or 
that, we shall immediately refer to the books to 
the right or left of us, so you see formal parties 
will be quite out of the question in my house, but 
we shall sit and talk as at a feast. That is what 
I believe most talk should be — a kind of feast. 

It happens that I do not live permanently in 
any place, and some might say that I have no 
home, but my home is where my books are, and 
when I am withdrawn from my books, I think 
back to them as to the home to which I shall 
return. 

Once, after a long tarry abroad, when I re- 
turned to the room which was then my home, 
there was no person to welcome me save the 
very kindly housemaid. She — and I remember 
this so gratefully after all these years — had put 
flowers iri my room, and as I stood looking lov- 
ingly at the backs of the books, and caressing 
one and then another, she said, " Your books 
creak on their shelves to welcome you back." 
I liked the conceit of that. They do welcome 

3 



A Book of Hours 

me back, and they speed my going, too, because 
from my reading my books, I am much better 
able to enjoy the countries where the makers of 
English literature have lived. And I would like 
to illustrate to you just that point — ^how much 
more meaningful England is to me because of 
the reading of its literature that I have done. 

Thackeray says: " To be the most beloved of 
English writers, what a title that is for a man I " 
He says It of Goldsmith whom I love, and I 
love Thackeray, too, but, to me, without ques- 
tion, the best beloved of English writers is 
Charles Lamb — " Saint Charles," Thackeray 
called him once. He didn't write the most pro- 
found books, but his essays are so full of his 
love for humanity, his love for his books, and 
they are written in a style so exquisite, that one 
must have joy in them. 

Not only do I care for Lamb, but I have 
much regard for those that love him, and very 
little for those who temper their enthusiasm re- 
specting him. It gives me pleasure to know that 
in some minor ways I am like Lamb. He says : 
" I am a bundle of prejudices, made up of lik- 
ings and disliklngs, the veriest thrall to sym- 
pathies, apathies, antipathies.'' 

4 



The Friendliness of Books 

So, years ago, when Mr. Frederick Harrison 
in a very much read article, *' On the Choice 
of Books," said, " Poor Lamb has a great deal 
to answer for," I permitted myself to dislike 
Mr. Harrison, and for years I cherished any- 
thing but kindly feelings for him. Then, some 
years ago at Oxford, he delivered an essay on 
" Style," and In the course of It he said that 
Charles Lamb and Thackeray came nearest the 
great French stylists In purity of diction, In 
grace, and In all the essentials of fine writing. 
Then I found my ill-feeling toward Mr. Har- 
rison disappearing, and ever since then I have 
had pleasant sentiments toward him. 

I care for him so much that I always have a 
feeling of pleasant comradeship for anyone that 
writes appreciatively of Lamb. It is no hyper- 
bolic statement for me to say that he is one of 
my best-loved friends, and even when circum- 
stances prevent my frequent reading of him, I 
have ever the same delicious pleasure In think- 
ing that this friendship is a possession that 
will be lifelong. Nothing will alienate me from 
him, and no power can take from me the joy 
there is In his exquisite work and his sweet 
spirit. 

5 



A Book of Hours 

This was point one that I wished to show 
you, how a writer himself may become our per- 
sonal friend, and the second point that I wish to 
make is that some character in a book may 
become our friend. 

A young girl that I admire very much is 
Elizabeth Bennet. Do you know her? She is 
the heroine of " Pride and Prejudice." Lord 
Beaconsfield claimed to have read " Pride and 
Prejudice " seventeen times. 

If you don't know Elizabeth I hope you will 
all make her acquaintance soon. She is one of 
my most admired friends, bright, vivacious, 
winsome, and her creator, Jane Austen, has, 
too, a style. Style is something very hard to de- 
fine, but is the essential quality which makes one 
writer's work differ from another, and gives it 
its distinctive value. Were I talking to you much 
about literature, I should be continually harping 
on style^ because to my mind it makes the writer. 
There is a certain edition of ** Pride and Preju- 
dice " in which I have much pleasure. It is 
illustrated by Mr. Hugh Thomson, and has an 
introduction by Prof. Saintsbury, which is most 
sympathetic. He says a world of charming 
things about Elizabeth Bennet, and in the 
6 



The Friendliness of Books 

course of his little essay he mentions several 
other heroines: I wonder if you know them. 

He says : " In the novels of the last hundred 
years there are vast numbers of young ladies 
with whom it might be a pleasure to fall in love ; 
there are, at least, five with whom, as it seems 
to me, no man of taste and spirit can help doing 
so. Their names are, in chronological order, 
Elizabeth Bennet, Diana Vernon, Beatrix Es- 
mond, Argemone Lavington, Barbara Grant. I 
should have been most in love with Beatrix and 
Argemone, for occasional companionship I 
should have preferred Barbara or Diana, but 
to live with and marry not one of them is com- 
parable to Elizabeth Bennet." 

These heroines are all in my acquaintance, 
and once I wrote a little story where these hero- 
ines came together. It was at the home of 
Barbara Grant that they met, and Barbara 
Grant lived in Edinburgh, and were there time 
I could explain to you fully and satisfactorily, 
I am sure, why they met there, rather than at 
Longbourne, the Bennets* home, or Whitford 
Priors, where the Lavingtons lived, or at Ken- 
sington, where Rachel Esmond lived with her 
beautiful daughter. Osbaldistone Hall, Diana's 

7 



A Book of Hours 

nominal home, is too remote. So Edinburgh 
seemed the most convenient place. Barbara is 
playing on her harpsichord, and saying over the 
lines she so saucily sung to David Balfour: 

" I am Miss Grant, sib to the advocate. You, 
I believe, are " 

" Diana Vernon," calls out Diana, and she 
enters with her riding whip. Of course she rode ; 
no one would expect Diana to come any other 
way, and very likely she took two or three five- 
barred gates on the way. 

Barbara says : " Sit ye down and we'll have * a 
two-handed crack' before anyone else comes in." 

"Are you expecting anyone else?" 

" It may be that Beatrix Esmond may 
look in." 

Now there are very complicated political rea- 
sons which can only be understood by those 
that know Diana and Beatrix, why Diana should 
frown on the spoiled beauty, but when Beatrix 
comes in her sedan-chair, Diana is courteous, 
and even admires the lace stomacher which 
Beatrix wears, and which she tells us is maline 
lace her cousin Colonel Esmond brought her 
from Flanders. Then Argemone comes, very 
elegant in a britzska, and lastly Elizabeth Ben- 
8 



The Friendliness of Books 

net, who has walked, and whose eyes are glow- 
ing and whose cheeks are brightly red. 

It Is a very animated conversation that these 
young ladies had, and, if I were sure that you 
all knew them as well as do I, I would tell you 
all they said, but it would be dull listening to 
the talk of strangers. 

Charles Lamb may represent for us the au- 
thor we know, and Elizabeth Bennet and her 
friends will give us characters whose acquaint- 
ance we made in books; and Charles Lamb sug- 
gests the essay to us, and Elizabeth Bennet the 
novel, and now Fd like to show you how a bit 
of poetry now and again helps us to enjoy the 
country ways of old England. 

I have great love for rivers in mountain coun- 
tries, and the River Rothay in Westmoreland 
has a large piece of my heart. It rises up in 
Easdale Tarn, foaming and tossing, then be- 
comes quieter. " Sing him thy best, for few or 
none sing him aright now he is gone." 

The rude old churchy with bare, bald tower is 
here, 

Beneath it highborn Rothay flows, 
Rothay, remembering well who slumbers here. 

And with cool murmur lulling his repose, 

9 



A Book of Hours 

Behind Helm Crag and Silver How the sheen 

Of the retreating day is less and less, 
Soon will the lordlier summits here unseen 

Gather the night about their nakedness. 
The half-heard bleat of sheep comes from the 
hill, 

Faint sounds of childish play are in the air, 
The river murmurs past, all else is still. 

The very graves seem stiller than they were. 

And this is a touch of evening stillness : 

" Star follows star Into the eve and the blue 
far above us, so blue and so far. And as a spray 
of honeysuckle flower brushes across a tired 
traveler's face and starts him that he thinks a 
ghost went by, so Hoden brushed by Hermod's 
side." 

And this scherzo gives a loving humorous 
fancy tonight: 

Night is to work in, night is for playtime. 
Good Heavens, not daytime. 
Oh, to sit on the bough 
That zigzags low by the woodland pool. 
And loudly laugh at man, the fool. 
That vows to the vulgar sun. 
But Oh, the sweetness, and Oh, the light. 
Of the high fastidious night! 
Oh, to awake with the wise old stars. 
The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars! 
10 



The Friendliness of Books 

It Is a beautiful country, but every Inch of the 
way has association. Here a poet has Hved, 
there a poet wrote. And It Is only when this 
poetry Is your own that the full joy of the coun- 
try can be yours. 

Sometimes It Is said to me by those who know 
I spend a good deal of time abroad, " You must 
be fond of traveling." Now, as a matter of fact, 
I am not fond of mere traveling, but I do love 
to see a place which Is consecrated to me because 
some poet has dwelt In It or written of It. I 
would travel far to see that. And what gives me 
my desire Is the same friendly book. 

I want to see the things of which Shakespeare 
and Milton have sung. What shall we read in 
preparation for England? It may be an unsat- 
isfactory answer, perhaps, but I say read^ read 
English literature, the English poets and essay- 
ists, and novelists, too. Suppose you hear a lark's 
song. It Is sweet. But If you know what Shake- 
speare says of It, and Shelley and Meredith, 
'twill be Infinitely sweeter. And so of every bird 
that sings, and every flower that grows, the 
friendly book will give you greater enjoyment 
of them. 

Every part of England has Its associations. I 

// 



A Book of Hours 

stopped short with the lake country. One of the 
most interesting towns in the world is Oxford; 
it interests one person for one thing, another for 
some other reason, but here again to me are all 
my book associations. Magdalen Bridge brings 
Shelley to memory, Pembroke College, Samuel 
Johnson; then among the illustrious names that 
troop from Oxford's past are Sir Joshua Reyn- 
olds, Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund 
Burke, Burne- Jones, William Morris. It is said 
that to call Oxford's roll is to include the 
best of England's genius. Everywhere about 
this beautiful city are there memories of those 
that have given lovely, lasting things to lit- 
erature. 

But one may read for the mere joy of read- 
ing, and something that has always been a de- 
light to me is a purely lyrical poem — one that in 
itself has the elements of a song. The saying 
aloud of such poems is to me the enjoyment of 
possessing an art. It takes the place of what 
other people have in technic for music or paint- 
ing or writing. 

Let me quote you these songs just for lyrical 
joy, the first, the song from Yeat's *' Land of 
Heart's Desire," 

12 



The Friendliness of Books 

The wind blows out of the gates of day. 
The wind blows over the lonely of heart 
And the lonely of heart is withered away. 
While the fairies dance in a place apart y 
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring, 
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air; 
For they hear the wind laugh, and murmur and 

sing 
Of a land where even the old are fair, 
And even the wise are merry of tongue; 
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, 
'' When the wind has laughed and murmured 

and sung. 
The lonely of heart is withered away! '' 

And this from Sidney Lanier's " Song of the 
Chattahoochee," 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain, 
Run the rapid and leap the fall. 
Split at the rock and together again. 
Accept my bed or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover^s pain to attain the plain 

Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall, 

* * * 

But, oh, not the hills of Habersham, 
And oh, not the valleys of Hall 

^3 



A Book of Hours 

Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call — 
Downward, to toil and he mixed with the main. 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
And a myriad powers mortally yearn. 
And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Call o*er the hills of Habersham 
Calls through the valleys of Hall, 

And then this is from " The Symphony " of 
Sidney Lanier. 

" O trade! O trade! would thou wert dead! 
The time needs heart — *tis tired of head: 
WeWe all for love,*^ the violins said. 
" Of what avail the rigorous tale 
Of bill for coin and box for bale? 
Grant thee, O trade! thine uttermost hope; 
Level red gold with blue sky slope, 
And base it deep as devils grope: 
When alVs done, what hast thou won 
Of the only sweet that^s under the sun? 
Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh 
Of true lovers least, least ecstasy? 

Life! Life! thou sea fugue. 
Writ from east to west. 

Love, Love alone can pore 

On thy dissolving score 

Of harsh half-phrasings. 
Blotted ere writ. 



The Friendliness of Books 

And doubled erasings 
Of chords most fit. 
Yea, Love, sole music master blest 
May read thy weltering palimpsest. 
To follow Timers dying melodies through, 
And never to lose the old in the new, 
And ever to solve the discords true — 

Love alone can do. 
And ever Love hears the poor folks crying. 
And ever Love hears the women sighing, 
And ever sweet Knighthood* s death defying. 
And ever wise childhood* s deep implying. 
But never a trader's glozing and lying. 

And yet shall Love himself be heard. 
Though long deferred, though long deferred: 
0*er the modern waste a dove hath whirred; 
Music is Love in search of a word.'* 

But notwithstanding the social and Intimate 
friendliness of books, the extension they give to 
our culture and interest, and the actual posses- 
sion of a personal art to one who memorizes 
and quotes from them, all readers will proba- 
bly agree that the fundamental advantage of a 
love for books Is the comfort of them, their 
substitution for the things of life which we miss, 
yet need not miss, having all written down for 
us in the heart's blood of those who knew. 

Sir John Herschel said regarding this point: 

J5 



A Book of Hours 

" Were I to pray for a taste that should stand 
me In stead under every variety of circumstances, 
and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to 
me during life, and a shield against Its Ills, how- 
ever things might go amiss and the world frown 
upon me, it would be a taste for reading. Give a 
man this taste and the means of gratifying it, 
and you can hardly fall of making him a happy 
man. You place him in contact with the best so- 
ciety in every period of history — ^with the wisest, 
the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the 
purest characters who have adorned humanity. 
You make him a denizen of all nations, a con- 
temporary of all ages. The world has been cre- 
ated for him." And Macaulay says likewise : " I 
would rather be a poor man in a garret with 
plenty of books, than a king who did not love 
reading." 

But to my own particular books which live in 
the room with me, I am most sensitive to their 
friendliness, and to that sweet spirit of friend- 
liness which emanates from them I feel most 

humbly, 

. . , O my master, 
Pardon me, if in vain thou art my master, 
And I fail to bring before men's eyes 
The image of the thing my heart is filled with, 

i6 



IN PRAISE OF LONDON: 
CHARLES LAMB'S LETTERS AND 

ESSATS 



THE phrase, " in praise of London," 
may be misunderstood, so let me ex- 
plain at once. I am going to let Charles 
Lamb praise London, while I praise Charles 
Lamb. London ne'er had so loving, so loyal a 
son as was Lamb, and while I shall not limit my- 
self to one element of his " Letters and Essays," 
I wish to emphasize that London had Lamb's 
warm love from his earliest days to the last. In 
the last years of his life he removed to Enfield, 
but he hoped some time to go to London " to 
breathe the fresher air of the metropolis." He 
removed from one house to another in Enfield, 
and liked the second one better because it was 
forty inches nearer town. How he loved the life 
of London. ** I have shed tears in the motley 
Strand for fullness of joy in so much living. . . . 
Is any night walk comparable to a walk from 
St. Paul's to Charing Cross, for lighting and 

J7 



A Book of Hours 

paving, for crowds going and coming without 
respite, the rattle of coaches, and the cheerful- 
ness of shops? ** 

During the years that I have talked on vari- 
ous subjects allied to literature, I have never 
asked any audience to listen twice to a disquisi- 
tion on Charles Lamb — for which I owe the au- 
diences an apology, as I ought every season to 
try to make them better acquainted with his 
sweet, diffusive life, and with his delightsome 
literary work. Although Lamb is to me " the 
best beloved of English writers," I have hesi- 
tated to accentuate the pleasure I have in his 
work, lest my hearers grow weary of my note. 

I shall not tell you anything new about Lamb, 
there is nothing new to tell, but lovers of Lamb 
like to hear the old retold. I have not made any 
startlingly original criticism — how can I, when 
for seventy years nearly, ever since Lamb^s death 
in 1834, critical appreciations have been forth- 
coming ? 

It was a pleasant surprise to Dr. Holmes to 
know that his feeling for his great-grandmother 
was not peculiar to him, but that everyone 
shared it. I shall like to know that you share 
my feeling with Lamb's admirers — a sense of 
18 



In Praise of London 

kinship, fellowship. Margaret Ogilvie was wont 
to designate people as blacks if they failed of 
her approval. " He is a black^^^ she used to say 
of Stevenson, because he had a larger public 
than her son. In the same spirit I call Carlyle a 
black, because he failed to give the kind word to 
Lamb. He is a signal exception among the men 
of letters, but he, the great celebrant of heroes, 
overlooked the heroic in Charles Lamb, and had 
no better word for him than ''that he was a sorry 
phenomenon with an insuperable proclivity to 
gin.'* It is a pleasant unction to my soul to recall 
Swinburne's remark, that '' the ' Essays of Elia ' 
will be found to have kept their perfume, and 
the ' Letters of Charles Lamb ' their sweet sa- 
vor, when ' Sartor Resartus ' lies darkening 
under the dust that covers its rarely disturbed 
pages.'' 

I hope you are not going to demand the most 
temperate expressions from me this hour. I 
think I may disappoint you if you insist upon 
that. Mr. Hamilton Mabie says: "There are 
days for Shakespeare, and days for Sir Thomas 
Browne, and days for Lamb, although I am 
often of the opinion that all days are for Lamb." 
For myself I do not know anyone whose pres- 

19 



A Book of Hours 

ence is so unobtrusive and acceptable at all times 
as is Charles Lamb's. And I was long ago of 
the opinion that all days are for Lamb. 

Lamb tells his own story in very frank auto- 
biography. It is a pleasure to put his ** Essays 
and Letters " in an order that tell a story of his 
life so completely that, to use his own expres- 
sion, " no additaments are required " to a full 
reading of it. Not only with the main events, 
but with the minute details one may become ac- 
quainted. His literary tastes are declared with 
charming candor in " Old and New Schoolmas- 
ter," " Detached Thoughts on Books and Read- 
ing," " Old China," to name only a trio of es- 
says. 

In one of Lamb's letters to Southey he writes : 
" I am a Christian, Englishman, Londoner, 
Templar, God help me when I come to put off 
these snug relations and get abroad in the world 
to come." Lamb's claim to being a Templar 
should be allowed, I think. He was born in the 
Temple, and had several homes in it, and it is 
Lamb's Temple^ primarily, that one haunts in 
London to-day. And may I say just a word ex- 
planatory of this Temple, hallowed to the en- 
thusiast because of the association with Lamb, 

20 



In Praise of LoJidon 

Goldsmith, Johnson, Spencer, Shakespeare, 
Sheridan. It was originally a lodge of the 
Knights Templars, which, as you know, was an 
order, military and religious, founded in the 
twelfth century to protect the Holy Sepulcher. 
On the dissolution of the order in 13 13, it be- 
came crown property, and after some vicissi- 
tudes in ownership it passed Into possession of 
the Knights of St. John, who, in 1346, leased it 
to the students of common law. From that day, 
more than five and a half centuries ago, until 
now the group of buildings have been a school 
of law. There were formerly three divisions of 
the Temple buildings: inner temple was the 
name given to those within the precincts of the 
city, middle temple and outer temple without 
the city. The buildings of the outer temple are 
removed. The buildings and courts of the Tem- 
ple extend from the Strand to the Thames. 
One enters by passages so narrow that there Is 
danger of overlooking them in a hasty journey 
along the Strand. But these narrow, dark ways 
lead to a church, one part of which was com- 
pleted in 1 185, and the other in 1240, deco- 
rated with the heraldic emblems of the Tem- 
plars, and containing monuments of the Tem- 

21 



A Book of Hours 

plars, and beside the church is a labyrinth of 
courts, a terrace, and cloisters. I unhesitatingly 
concur in the judgment that pronounces it *' the 
most elegant spot in the metropolis " — and how 
came it to be Lamb's birthplace? Why, his fa- 
ther, John Lamb, was servant to Samuel Salt, 
one of the benchers of the inner temple. 

" I was born under the shadow of St. Dun- 
stan*s steeple, just where the conflux, of the east- 
ern and western inhabitants of this twofold city 
meet and jostle in friendly opposition at Tem- 
ple Bar.'* " I was born and passed the first seven 
years of my life in the Temple. What a transi- 
tion for a countryman visiting London for the 
first time ! Classic green recesses ! " What a 
transition for a Londoner, too! So many have 
never been in the Temple, and several looked 
upon me as an eccentric for going so often to 
the classic place. It was through the Influence of 
Samuel Salt that Lamb secured his entrance to 
Christ Hospital, the school founded by Edward 
VI, the boy patron of boys, on site of thir- 
teenth century Grey Friars, some of whose walls 
are still standing. There Is a Charles Lamb 
prize now given every year to the best English 
essayist among Blue Coat boys, consisting of a 

22 



In Praise of London 

silver medal on one side of which Is a laurel 
wreath, inwrapped around the hospital's arms, 
on the other side Lamb's profile. It Is worthy 
of consideration how favorable were these early 
surroundings for fostering Lamb's Inherent taste 
for the qualntnesses of an earlier age. He was 
some years at Christ Hospital, passing his days 
between cloister and cloister — the Knights Tem- 
plars of the twelfth century to the Grey Friars 
of the thirteenth. Nobody needs to be told the 
tributes he has paid to his school — the ** mag- 
nificent eulogy " he has pronounced In his own 
name, " Recollections of Christ Hospital " ; 
then, with his delight In mystification, conceive 
the pleasure he must have had In writing from 
the other point of view, styling the article 
" Christ Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," 
over the signature Elia: 

** I remember Lamb at school, and can well 
recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, 
which I and other of his schoolfellows had not. 
His friends lived In town, and were near at 
hand; and he had the privilege of going to see 
them almost as often as he wished, through 
some Invidious distinction, which was denied to 
us. He had his tea and hot rolls In a morning, 

23 



A Book of Hours 

while we were battening upon our quarter-of-a* 
penny loaf — our crug moistened with attenuated 
small beer, In wooden piggins, smacking of the 
pitched leathern jack it was poured from. Our 
Monday*s milk porridge, blue and tasteless, and 
the pea soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, 
were enriched for him with a slice of * extraordi- 
nary bread and butter ' from the hot loaf of the 
Temple.** 

Then he assumes the personality of Cole- 
ridge. " I was a poor friendless boy. My par- 
ents, and those who should care for me, were 
far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs 
which they could reckon upon as being kind to 
me in the great city, after a little forced notice 
which they had the grace to take of me on my 
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my 
holiday visits. They seemed to them to recur 
too often, though I thought them few enough; 
and one after another they failed me, and I felt 
myself alone among six hundred playmates.*' 
This paragraph has such a hold on my imagina- 
tion, and pictures so touchingly the lonely little 
Christ Hospital boy, that one evening last sum- 
mer, when a little fellow wearing the garb of 
the hospital was a guest at the table where I ate, 
24- 



In Praise of London 

I was quite concerned lest he should feel some 
lack of cordiality In his welcome and entertain- 
ment. 

After going on for some paragraphs in the 
character of Coleridge, Lamb takes on his own 
identity, and makes his famous apostrophe to 
Coleridge : " Come back into memory like as 
thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies — 
with hope like a fiery column before thee, the 
dark pillar not yet turned, Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge, logician, metaphysician, bard. How have 
I seen the casual passer through the cloisters 
stand still, entranced with admiration (while he 
weighed the disproportion between the speech 
and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear 
thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, 
the mysteries of Jambllchus, or Plotinus (for 
even In those years thou waxedest not pale at 
such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer 
in his Greek or Pindar — while the walls of the 
old Grey Friars reechoed to the accents of the 
inspired charity boy! " 

Lamb was happy at school ; favorite with fel- 
low-pupils and instructors, one hears nothing of 
the tyranny of Boyer, the head master, exercised 
over Lamb — " protected by some attraction of 

25 



A Book of Hours 

temper In the quaint child." Lamb's rank at 
school would have entitled him to a university 
education at Cambridge or Oxford, the bounty 
bestowed on the best scholars by the hospital, 
but acceptance Implied the taking of orders, 
and the Impediment In Lamb's speech prevented 
his looking to the Church, and, furthermore, his 
assistance was needed at home In the support of 
the family. Doubtless when he left, aged nearly 
fifteen, he had some acquaintance with his life- 
long " midnight darlings," above all, he had 
nurtured himself upon the plays of Shakespeare, 
which were the " strongest and sweetest food of 
his mind from Infancy." 

" Melancholy was the transition at fourteen 
from the abounding playtime." Now for thirty- 
five years Lamb was to know the '* dull drudg- 
ery of the desk's dead wood." Samuel Salt had 
died, the Lambs had removed to poor quarters 
In Little Queen Street, and here It was that 
Mary, the sister. In a fit of temporary madness, 
killed her mother. Always when I have spoken 
of this event, I have let the barest mention suf- 
fice, lest I should harrow the feelings of my au- 
ditors, but I am going to read to you a little 
concerning It, and my defense Is this: after 
26 



In Praise of London 

reading Dr. Brown's story, " Rab and His 
Friends," many said: "Why did you make me 
suffer so ? " When that was told the father of 
Dr. Brown, he said: *' And why shouldn't they 
suffer? It will do them good, for pity — genuine 
pity — as old Aristotle says. Is * of power to purge 
the mind.' " 

" During those lamentable days Lamb saw 
his sister but seldom. * Alas ! I too often hear 
her ! Her rambling chat Is better to me than the 
sense and sanity of this world.' That Is to me 
the most tender and touching utterance In all the: 
letters since letters were Invented." 

The newspaper report of this affair Is grati- 
fying because of Its decent reticence. No names 
are given. Benjamin Ellis Martin says: ''One 
error the reporter did make. It was not the 
landlord, but Charles, who came at the child's, 
cries, luckily at hand just In time to disarm his 
sister, and thus prevent another harm. So he 
was at hand from that day on, all through his 
life, holding her and helping her In the frequent 
successive returns of her wretched malady. His 
gentle, loving, resolute soul proved Its fine and 
firm fiber under the strain of more than forty 
years of undevlating devotion to which I know 

27 



A Book of Hours 

no parallel. He quietly gave up all other ties 
and cares for this supreme duty; he never re- 
pined, nor posed; he never even said to himself 
that he was doing a fine thing." He took his 
duty to be " wedded to the fortunes of my sister 
and my poor old father." The father would 
complain: "If you won't play with me, you 
might as well not come home at all." The jus- 
tice of this Lamb recognized, and gave the even- 
ings to his father. In " Benchers of the Inner 
Temple " he has given a picture of his father in 
his prime, of his honesty, his cleverness — then 
" I saw him in the last stage of human weak- 
ness, ' a remnant ' most forlorn of what he was. 
He would weep till I have wished that sad sec- 
ond childhood might have a mother still to lay 
Its head upon her lap. But the common mother 
of us all received him gently into hers." 

Of life with his sister Mary, he writes: " We 
house together, old bachelor and maid, with oc- 
casional bickerings, as it should be among near 
relations." In his life there was from now on 
" mingling of the grave, even terrible, with the 
gay, and 'twas reflected in his work." There 
were periods when Mary and he lived quietly 
together, working, caring one for the other, and 
28 



In Praise of London 

then there came weeks or months when they 
were separated and Lamb was left alone. But 
friends grew in numbers, and the hospitality of 
the Lambs was famous. The Lambs went back 
to live in the Temple, and for fifteen or sixteen 
years the loved locality was their home. Have 
you every walked down dingy Inner Temple 
Lane, or along King's Bench Walk, and pic- 
tured to yourself the goodly company that came 
to those humble rooms ? There was a repast set 
out, and everyone helped himself to the cold 
roast or boiled^ the smoking roasted potatoes, 
and foaming porter from a Fleet Street tap ! It 
hasn't a delicate savor — but decline the material 
viands if you will, you can't pretend to find bet- 
ter company elsewhere. Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
Hazlitt, Godwin, Captain Burney, his son Mar- 
tin, Leigh Hunt, Tom Hood, De Quincey, Ser- 
geant Talfoned, Crabb Robinson — these were a 
few of the stars, and the brightest that graced 
the rooms. Crabb Robinson says: "In that 
humble apartment I spent many happy hours, 
and saw a greater number of excellent persons 
than I had ever seen collected together in one 
room." There was whist, and probably the 
rigor of the game was maintained usually, even 

29 



A Boo k^of Hours 

to the standard of Sarah Battle; but the rigor 
must have been relaxed somewhat on the occa- 
sion when Lamb made the famous remark to 
Martin Burney : " Martin, if dirt were trumps, 
what a hand you would hold! " But it is of this 
same Martin that Lamb says: " Free from self- 
seeking, any low design, I have not known a 
whiter soul than thine.'' 

'Twas here in the Temple that Charles and 
Mary, the bachelor and spinster, did Shake- 
speare Into fine form for the children whom they 
loved. Mary says: "You would like to see us, 
as we often sit writing on one table (but not on 
one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena 
In * A Midsummer Night's Dream,' or, rather, 
like an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking 
snuff, and he groaning all the while, and saying 
he can make nothing of It, which he always says 
till he has finished, and then he finds he has made 
something of It." 

Have you ever been to Covent Garden some 
morning to see the fruit and flowers? Did you 
go down Russell Street from Drury Lane, pass 
the theater on your left, and 20 Russell Street 
on your right — did you stop to look a minute at 
20 Russell Street, and ponder, " Here were writ- 
30 



In Praise of London 

ten the essays that have charmed readers for 
three generations and will go on charming them 
for many more." Dally, Charles Lamb, a clerk 
in the East India House, wended his way from 
Russell Street to Leadenhall Street, performed 
his clerkly duties from ten to four; here were be- 
gun in 1820 the " Essays of Ella.'* Lamb writes 
to Dorothy Wordsworth when they take up 
their home in Russell Street : " We are in the in- 
dividual spot that I like best in all this great 
city." In Lamb's parlor, in Russell Square, 
Coleridge used to repeat his own Kubla Khan 
so entranclngly that " it irradiates and brings 
heaven and elyslan bowers Into my parlor while 
he sings or says it." And from here stood the 
permanent invitation, " Cards and cold mutton 
In Russell Street on Friday at eight to nine. Gin 
and jokes from one half past that time to 
twelve." 

It was in the last years of his dwelling in the 
Temple and the six in Russell Street that he did 
most of his writing. From Russell Street, after 
six years, they removed to Islington, 19 Cole- 
brook Row. 

Although it is not my purpose here to speak 
with any detail of Lamb's friends, I must. In con- 

31 



A Book of Hours 

nection with Colebrook Row, mention George 
Dyer. He appears repeatedly in Lamb's let- 
ters, and on several occasions in his essays. 
Scholarly, absent, and eccentric naturally, there 
is no doubt he was, but Lamb has gently, play- 
fully elaborated upon those qualities, and the 
George Dyer that one meets in Lamb's works 
is a delightful creation. Augustine Birrell has 
suggested that one with time at his command 
should hunt George Dyer through Lamb's let- 
ters, and find it excellent game. 

When I was looking in Cambridge for some 
books relating to its history, a bookseller put in 
my hand the " History of Cambridge," by 
George Dyer, and there flashed before me a 
vision of Lamb's dear absent-minded friend, 
George Dyer. 

Lamb says: " D. has been engaged, he tells 
me, through a long course of laborious years in 
an investigation into all curious matter connected 
with the two universities. The ardor with which 
he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, 
has not met with all the encouragement it de- 
serves, either here or at Cambridge." 

** When you come Londonward, you will no 
longer find us in Covent Garden, but in Cole- 
32 



In Praise of London 

brook Row." It was to this house In Colebrook 
Row that Lamb came home forever when his 
employers gave the very kind recognition of his 
long service by retiring him upon a handsome 
pension. " 'Twas with some pain we were 
evulsed from Colebrooke; you may find some of 
our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change 
habitations is to die to them; and In my time I 
have died seven deaths. But I do not know 
whether every such change does not bring with 
it a rejuvenescence. 'TIs an enterprise, and 
shoves back the sense of death's approximating. 
My house deaths have generally been periodical, 
recurring after seven years, but this last is pre- 
mature by half that time. Cut off in the flower 
of Colebrooke ! The MIddletonlan stream and 
all its echoes mourn. Even the minnows dwln- 
dle.'* 

Then when he moved again he writes : 
*' We have finally torn ourselves outright 
away from Colebrooke, where I had no health, 
and are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, 
where I have experienced good^ Then the 
Lambs went still farther into the country to En- 
field. At first they kept house, but the care was 
too great for Mary, and they went to board in 

33 



A Book of Hours 

the next house. " We have taken a farewell of 
the pompous troublesome trifle called housekeep- 
ing, and are settled down into poor boarders and 
lodgers, at next door, with an old couple, the 
Baucis and Baucida of Enfield." 

In " Best Letters " he writes : " I have passed 
all my days in London, until I have formed as 
many and intense local attachments as any of you 
mountaineers can have done with dead nature." 
" A garden was the primitive prison until man 
with Promethean felicity and boldness luckily 
sinned himself out of it." But Lamb's essays 
reveal another phase of his love for London — 
a love for humanity, all humanity, but particu- 
larly for those that are, because of accident, 
apart from their fellows. He has written essays 
of exquisite finish, of the tenderest humor. Their 
literary quality cannot be denied — it is the finest ; 
but diffused throughout them is the element 
which makes us love the man Lamb apart from 
the artist — it is the quality of humanity^ the love 
of his kind, which pervades his work. Next to 
the pleasure of reading Lamb himself is the sat- 
isfaction one gets in a thoroughly good apprecia- 
tion of him, and Walter Pater's subtle analysis 
of Lamb's work cannot fail to please one. Pater 

34 .^ 



In Praise of London 

says: ** His simple mother pity for those who 
suffer by accident, or unklndness of nature, 
blindness or fateful disease of mind like his sis- 
ter's, has something primitive In its largeness/' 
I shall like to instance two or three of Lamb's 
essays in which this kindly spirit animates the 
whole. Do you know the essay ** In Praise of 
Chimney Sweepers " ? Poetical it is. Professor 
Gates says that '* the chimney sweeper comes out 
all cobwebbed with a gossamer beauty — a sort 
of prince from the Land of Dreaming, a subli- 
mated little symbol of thoughts and feelings 
that in actual life are leagues out of his ken.'* 
That is true; but underneath that airy, fantastic 
little figure he evolves Is the genuine, grimy lit- 
tle sweep whom Lamb loves and pities for his 
hard, unchlldlike lot. From '' On the Decay of 
Beggars," no one will for a moment fancy that 
Lamb is seriously an advocate of mendicity, but 
he is pleading for charity of heart as well as 
pocket, for the unfortunate, maimed, and blind 
whose untoward fortune has given them to bear 
wallet and clap dish. His essay " Poor Rela- 
tions " begins with raillery, but ends with a dig- 
nified portrait of the self-respecting poor rela- 
tion. 

35 



A Book of Hours 

But do not for a moment think that, consid- 
ered as literature, I would have you put the 
autobiographic quality of the essays above the 
literary value. I have been emphasizing the per- 
sonal element, the love we give to the man, irre- 
spective of the artist, but It Is quite time that we 
consider the rare quality of the artistic output. 
Irrespective of the man. Lamb might have been 
all that he was — a loving brother, a devoted son, 
a constant friend; underneath the blithe surface 
there might have been the same tragic under- 
current, and had his work been without intrinsic 
value he would never have come into our ken — 
for our love and admiration. There is a danger 
that the personal may be made to dominate, 
that the anecdotal will entirely satisfy, and 
Lamb^s work remain unread ; but let it not be so 
with you. For himself, and from his own point 
of view, the exercise of his gift, of his literary 
art, came to gild or sweeten a life of monotonous 
labor, and seemed, as far as regarded others, no 
very important thing, availing to give them a 
little pleasure and Inform them a little, chiefly 
in a retrospective manner, but In no way con- 
cerned with the turning of the tides of the great 
world. And yet this very modesty, this unambi- 

36 



In Praise of London 

tlous way of conceiving his work, has impressed 
upon it a certain exceptional enduringness. Of 
the remarkable English writers contemporary 
with Lamb, many were occupied with religious, 
moral, political Ideas, which have since, in some 
sense or other, entered permanently into the gen- 
eral consciousness, and these having no longer 
any stimulus for a generation provided with a 
different stock of ideas; the writings of those 
who spent so much of themselves in their propa- 
gation have lost with posterity something of 
what they gained by them in Immediate influ- 
ence. 

There Is a point in Lamb where autobiogra- 
phy and literary imagination meet in such 
charming wholeness that, although the subject 
Is so delicate and personal, sad and fruitless, we 
may benefit by the evanescence of its truthful- 
ness, to enjoy and speak of it as, perhaps, spir- 
itual biography. I refer to his two loves — for 
Alice we have that New Year's letter. 

" I would scarce now have any of those un- 
toward accidents and events of my life reversed. 
I would no more alter them than the incidents 
of some well-contrived novel. Methlnks it Is 
better that I should have pined away seven of 

37 



A Book of Hours 

my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair 

hair and fairer eyes of Alice W than that so 

passionate a love adventure should be lost.'* And 
here is the exquisite reverie of the " Dream Chil- 
dren " ; " * We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor 
are we children at all. The children of Alice call 
Bertram father. We are nothing, less than noth- 
ing and dreams. We are only what might have 
been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of 
Lethe millions of ages before we have existence 
and a name ' — and Immediately awaking I found 
myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair 
with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my 
side." 

And of Hester, the lovely Quakeress, to 
whom he never spoke, and whom he adored si- 
lently and from afar, only knowing that she was 
named Hester, he leaves : 

When maidens such as Hester die^ 
Their place we may not well supply. 
Though ye among a thousand try, 
With vain endeavor, 

A month or more hath she been dead, 
Yet cannot I by force be led 
To think upon the wormy bed 
And her together. 

38 



In Praise of London 

My sprightly neighbor gone before, 
To that unknozvn and silent shore, 
Shall we not meet as heretofore 
Some summer morning. 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that would not go away, 
A sweet forewarning?^ 

Three important elements of Lamb's work 
are his style, humor, and critical faculty. 

His criticisms on art, drama, and literature 
are keen, sincere, sane. No art critic has done 
better by Hogarth. Actors, both men and women, 
that were Lamb's contemporaries are kept in 
memory now because of his delicate, discriminat- 
ing criticism. 

AInger, In speaking of Lamb's defense of 
Congreve and Wycherly, says: ** It must be ad- 
mitted that Lamb does not convince us of the 
sincerity of his reasoning, and probably he did 
not convince himself. He loved paradox, and, 
moreover, he loved to find some soul of good- 
ness in things evil." As Hartley Coleridge adds, 
" It was always his way to take hold of things 
by the better handle." 

Of his humor, unexpectedness is its character- 

39 



A Book of Hours 

istlc. John Sterling, it is said, used to chuckle 
again and again over the sudden way in which 
he turned up Adam. Just as unexpected in his 
talk, too, are the slight digressions which make 
immense wit. Would you not have liked to be 
his companion one day in the stage coach — " we 
traveled," he says, " with one of those trouble- 
some fellow-passengers that is called a well-in- 
formed man." They had discussed all subjects, 
and Lamb was thinking of getting outside to es- 
cape the annoyance, when the man put the un- 
lucky question : " What sort of a crop of turnips 
would we have this year?" Lamb replied with 
the greatest gravity that he believed it depended 
on the boiled legs of mutton. That clinched the 
conversation. He replied to the bishop who in- 
quired how he had learned to smoke such furious 
pipes: "Sir, I have toiled for it as some men 
toil for virtue." Brander Matthews in an essay 
whose title I have forgotten, in a book that 
shares the essay's fate, has stated a list of claims 
that Americans have in Lamb, and this quality 
of unexpectedness in his humor constitutes one 
of the claims. 

One of his friends said of his faulty speech : 
" That stammer was worth an annuity to him as 
40 



In Praise of London 

an ally for his wit. Firing under cover of that 
advantage, he did double execution; for in the 
first place, the distressing sympathy of the hear- 
ers with his distress of utterance won for him 
Invariably the silence of deep attention ; and then 
while he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of 
mute suspense by an appearance of distress that 
he perhaps did not feel, down came a plunging 
shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the 
effect it would else have had." 

But before I leave the subject of Lamb's hu- 
mor, let me once again refer to Walter Pater's; 
appreciation of Lamb. He says, in estimating 
the humor of Ella, " we must no more forget 
the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune 
and pity than we could forget it in his actual 
story.'* I have in other connections quoted to 
you Pater's statement of humor, " it proceeds 
from the amalgam of pity and mirth," but here 
it belongs. It Is from his appreciation of Lamb 
that he gives the definition. 

There Is no doubt that the quaint, somewhat 
archaic style that Lamb gives us in his essays Is 
partly his native style of expression, his distinct- 
ive mode of clothing his thought; neither is there 
any doubt that his Inherent tendency was fos- 

4^ 



A Book of Hours 

tered by constant association with Browne, Mar- 
vel, Massinger, and other beloved worthies of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is the 
happiest vehicle for his thought, and to fail to 
appreciate how perfectly his thought and expres- 
sion blend is to lose the essential pleasure from 
Lamb's style. 

Elia has been accused of affectation of style. 
Better that a writer should be natural in a self- 
pleasing quaintness than to affect a naturalness 
that should be strange to him. " I delight in 
Lamb," I had said to some one. " Why, I 
should not fancy you'd care for him. Do you 
like his ' Chapter on Ears? ' — * Twin append- 
ages, hanging ornament, and, architecturally 
speaking, handsome volutes to the human capi- 
tal.' Do you like that sort of thing? " Think 
of anyone's losing the light touch of playfulness 
and taking that essay with solid seriousness. 

Those that must have the abstract will not 
find satisfaction in Lamb. He is ever " close to 
the concrete, to the details great or small of 
actual things, no part blurred to his view by 
abstract theories." In his delightful essay, one 
of his most delightful essays, " Imperfect Sym- 
pathies," one may find explanation why his' 
42 



In Praise of London 

essays will not gratify all — " Never judging 
systemwise of things, but fastening on par- 
ticulars." 

*' They will cost you In cash, these two vol- 
umes (his letters), full as they are from title- 
page to colophon, with the sweetness and nobil- 
ity, the mirth and the melancholy of their au- 
thor's life, touched as every page of them is with 
traces of a hard fate bravely borne, seven shil- 
lings sixpence. It is the cab fare to and from a 
couple of dull dinners.'' 

Who, I wonder, ever managed to squeeze Into 
a correspondence of forty years truer humor, 
madder nonsense, sounder sense, or more tender 
sympathy I They do not prate about first princi- 
ples, but they contain many things conducive to 
a good life here below. The earlier letters strike 
the more solemn notes. As a young man. Lamb 
was deeply religious, and for a time the appall- 
ing tragedy of his life, the death of his mother 
by his sister's hand, deepened this feeling. His 
letters to Coleridge In September and October, 
1776, might very well appear In the early chap- 
ters of a saint's life. They exhibit the rare union 
of a colossal strength, entire truthfulness (no 
single emotion being ever exaggerated) , with the 

43 



A Book of Hours 

tenderest and most refined feelings. How peo- 
ple, reading these letters, can ever have the im- 
pudence to introduce into the tones of their 
voices, when they are referring to Lamb, the 
faintest suspicion of condescension, as if they 
were speaking of one weaker than themselves, 
must always remain an unsolved problem of 
human conceit. His notes are all high. He 
is sublime, heartrending, excruciatingly funny, 
outrageously ridiculous, sometimes possibly an 
inch or two overdrawn. He carries the charm of 
incongruity and total unexpectedness to the high- 
est. 

Lamb said of his own reading: " My reading 
has been lamentably desultory and unmethod- 
ical, odd, out-of-the-way old plays and treatises," 
then he playfully exaggerates his own ignorance. 
" Mary must have a story, well, ill, or indiffer- 
ently told; while I am hanging for the thou- 
sandth time over Burton or his strange contem- 
poraries she is abstracted in some modern tale 
or adventure, whereof our common reading table 
is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. . . . 
I can read anything that is a book. I have no 
repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for 
me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. There are 



In Praise of London 

things in that shape which I cannot allow for 
such: Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket- 
books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered at 
the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Stat- 
utes — the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, 
Beattie, works of Flavius Josephus, that learned 
Jew, and Paley's * Moral Philosophy.' With 
these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I 
thank my stars for a taste so catholic, so unex- 
cluding." 

Now I am going to quote from some great 
lovers of Lamb testimonies of his beautiful 
spirit. For, after passing through his literary 
genius, we all, great lovers and obscure, come 
back with our most voluble if not final word 
and affection for the dearness of the man. 

Edward Fitzgerald quotes Thackeray thus: 
" * Saint Charles I ' said Thackeray to me thirty 
years ago, putting one of Charles Lamb's letters 
to his forehead," one that Charles wrote to Ber- 
nard Barton. Lionel Johnson has caught the 
phrase up into a poem : 

Saint Charles! for Thackeray called thee so: 
Saint, at whose name our fond hearts glow: 
See now, this age of tedious woe, 
That snaps and snarls! 

45 



A Book of Hours 

Thine was a life of tragic shade ^ 
A life of care and sorrow made: 
But naught could make thine heart afraid. 
Gentle Saint Charles! 

Encumbered dearly with old hooks, 
Thou, by the pleasant chimney nooks 
Didst laugh, with merry-meaning looks, 

Thy griefs away; 
We, bred on modern magazines. 
Point out hozv much our sadness means 

Day by dull day. 

Lover of London! whilst thy feet 
Haunted each old familiar street. 
Thy brave heart found lifers turmoil sweet. 

Despite lifers pain. 
We fume and fret and, when we can. 
Cry up some new and noisy plan. 
Big with the Rights and Wrongs of Man; 

And whereas the gain? 

Gentle Saint Charles! I turn to thee, 
Tender and true: thou teaches t me 
To take with joy what joys there be. 

And bear the rest. 
Walking thy London day by day, 
The thought of thee makes bright my way. 
And in thy faith I fain would stay 

Doing my best, 

46 



In Praise of London 

Coleridge responded to Lamb's desire for con- 
solation, " I look upon you as a man called by 
sorrow and anguish, and a strange desolation of 
hopes. Into quietness, and a soul set apart and 
made peculiar to God." 

Oh, he was good, if ever good man zvas. 
The love of friends without a single foe. 

Archbishop Leighton, standing beside Lamb's 
grave, said: "This sweet, diffusive, bountiful 
soul, desiring only to do good." 

And so Lamb always had his own In life and 
memory, his friends were always just such ones 
as he required and deserved, his environment 
suited his taste and development, but there re- 
mains but one false note In all his monuments — 
he Is not burled In his beloved London. And 
William Watson writes the lament of It, " At 
Lamb's Grave In Edmonton." 

Not here, O teeming city, zvas it meet 

Thy lover, thy most faithful should repose, 
But where the multitudinous life tide flows, 
TFhose ocean murmur zvas to him more sweet 
Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat 

Of flocks in springtime; there should earth en- 
close 

" 47 



A Book of Hours 

His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes, 
There ^neath the music of thy million feet. 

In love of thee this lover had no peer, 

Thine eastern or thine western fane had viade 
Fit habitation for his noble shade. 

Mother of mighties, nurse of none more dear. 

Not here in rustic exile, O not here 
Thine Elia like an alien should be laid. 



48 



EDWARD FITZGERALD AND 

HIS FRIENDS IN EAST 

ANGLIA 



THE Edward Fitzgerald to whom we are 
to give the hour is not the hero of 
picturesque anecdote. The teller of his 
days must be content to relate how he read his 
beloved books by his fireside, looked for the 
daffodils to take the winds of March with beau- 
ty, and the yearly return of the birds, sailed his 
boat in home seas, and, as he sailed, read and 
translated the ancient classics, consorted with 
fisher folk, and found in their simple life more 
in harmony with his taste than In the deadly 
complex strife waged in other spheres. He was 
a writer, but " he shunned notoriety as sedulous- 
ly as most people seek It." ; 

His latest biographer, Mr. Arthur Chris- 
topher Benson, after saying that Fitzgerald's 
life Is singularly void of Incident, sums it up 
tersely and truly : " It is the history of a few 
great friendships, much quiet benevolence, ten- 

49 



A Book of Hours 

der loyalty, wistful enjoyment. The tangible re- 
sults are a single small volume of poetry, of Im- 
perishable quality, some accomplished transla- 
tions of no great literary Importance, a little 
piece of delicate prose writing, and many beauti- 
ful letters. But over the whole Is the Indefinable 
charm of temperament and personality." 

And that explains succinctly why I talk of Ed- 
ward Fitzgerald, why he Is our friend, as are 
other men greater In the world of letters — there 
is over what he has done the indefinable charm 
of temperament and personality that binds us to 
him as to a dear friend, in a less degree than we 
are bound to Lamb, or Goldsmith, or Thack- 
eray, but the quality is akin. Fitzgerald Is our 
personal friend, and because he Is, you listen in- 
dulgently to my retelling what you know of him. 

This scholarly recluse was modest almost be- 
yond imagining in his estimation of himself, af- 
fectionate, ever most ready to serve his friends, 
but rarely seeking them out, and protesting 
against their taking any trouble to find him, as 
he had so little to of^er; a man whose benefac- 
tions w;ere boundless, but most unostentatiously 
bestowed. 

Our best acquaintance with him comes not 
50 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

through any biography, but through the *' friend- 
ly human letters,'* as Carlyle calls them. Cariyle, 
in gratefully acknowledging one of Fitzgerald's 
letters, says : *'One gets so many fwhuman letters, 
ovine, bovine, porcine; I wish you would write 
a little oftener; when the beneficent Daimon 
suggests, fail not to lend an ear to him.'* 

Edward Fitzgerald was born in East Anglia, 
near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, In an old Jacobean 
manor house. In 1809. His father was John Pur- 
cell, who had married his cousin Miss Fitzger- 
ald, and upon her father's death, whose heiress 
she was, Mr. Purcell assumed her name and coat 
of arms. The family owned several English es- 
tates, but when Edward was a child they lived 
for many years in France. In Paris, they lived 
In a house once occupied by Robespierre. Among 
their friends in Paris were the Kembles, and in 
E. F.'s letters to Mrs. Fanny Kemble In later 
life, and in her reminiscences, we get glimpses of 
these early days. In her " Old Woman's Gos- 
sip " Mrs. Kemble says: "The mother was a 
remarkable woman, eccentric, of great beauty, 
and strength of character. Mrs. Fitzgerald Is 
among the most vivid memories of my girlish 
days. Her husband was a most amiable and ge- 

5^ 



A Book of Hours 

nial Irish gentleman." After describing her per- 
sonal appearance, Mrs. Kemble says: "I also 
remember as a feature of sundry dinners at their 
house, the first gold dessert service and table or- 
naments that I ever saw, the magnificence of 
which made a great Impression upon me." 

Edward writes of his mother to Mrs. Kem- 
ble: " My mother was a remarkable woman, as 
you said in a former letter: and as I constantly 
believe in outward Beauty as an Index of a Beau- 
tiful Soul within, I used sometimes to wonder 
what Feature in her fine Face betrayed what was 
not so good in her Character. I think as usual 
the Lips : there was a twist of Mischief in them 
now and then like that in the Tail of a Cat ! — 
otherwise so smooth and amiable ! " 

One of Fitzgerald's peculiarities in writing 
was his fondness for capitals. Capitals for 
nouns! And I can see now how that statement 
of his looked, besprinkled with large letters. 

Edward was sent to a school at Bury St. Ed- 
munds, Edward VFs school, and several of his 
schoolfellows were lifelong friends — James 
Spedding, the Baconian; J. M. Kemble, the 
brother of Fanny Kemble, and a famous Anglo- 
Saxon scholar; and William Bodham Donne, the 
52 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

historical writer. The school had a great repu- 
tation, and the Master, Dr. Malkin, gave special 
attention to the writing of English. 

Bury St. Edmunds is an interesting corner of 
East Anglia, and always held the affection of 
Fitzgerald. He visited It the day before he died, 
in June, 1883. It was one of the most famous 
of English shrines. In the year 867 the pagan 
Danes martyred the Christian king, Edmund, 
the last Saxon king of East Anglia. In 903 his 
remains were translated to Bury St. Edmunds, 
and the shrine became one of the most famous 
in England, antedating Becket's shrine by three 
centuries. 

One of the famous abbots — the most famous 
— was Abbot Sampson. To me, the figure of 
Abbot Sampson, who presided over the monas- 
tery from 1 1 83 to 1202, Is intensely interesting. 
He it is who Is the hero of Carlyle's enthusiastic 
comment In " Past and Present." He Is far and 
away the most picturesque figure connected with 
Bury St. Edmunds, and if one will but read Car- 
lyle's setting forth of the story, old Bury St. 
Edmunds will have tenfold the interest it can 
have without his dramatic painting of the do- 
ings of Abbot Sampson and his compeers. As I 

53 



A Book of Hours 

walked about the ruins of Bury St. Edmunds 
with the loquacious gardener, he explained many 
points in a way distinctly his own. I was looking 
at some slabs that were unearthed not such a 
very long time ago, and the gardener explained : 
" During some recent eskervatlons those pantiles 
were uncovered, and one of them is probably 
that of Abbot Sampson." I am sure the good 
man could not understand the fervor of my tone, 
as I exclaimed: " Oh, I hope It is the tomb of 
the abbot ! " nor the eagerness with which I 
scanned the eskervated pantiles. 

But If Abbot Sampson is to me the most In- 
teresting figure, the most Interesting event is one 
that occurred a few years after the death of the 
abbot. Everyone knows of the tyranny of John 
Lackland, King of England, of his abuse of 
power, and how his barons wearied of his bad 
government, his nonfulfillment of promises, his 
exactions, demanded and obtained the Magna 
Charta; but perhaps you have forgotten that it 
was here at Bury St. Edmunds, In the beautiful 
old abbey, during the saint's festival, In the year 
1 2 14, that the doughty barons made their vows 
to demand their rights. To me, the ruins of the 
high altar, before which the barons solemnly 

54 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

swore that unless the king granted them the 
charter they would unite against him, arm their 
retainers, and fight until they gained their end, 
is one of the most sacred places I have ever seen. 
This seems a long digression from Fitzgerald, 
perhaps, but it is an intentional one, as I wish 
you to loiow that these East Anglla places which 
have some slight interest from Edward Fitzger- 
ald's brief tarrying may have great interest 
apart from him, too. And Bury St. Edmunds is 
the next place chosen for a historic pageant, suc- 
ceeding Warwick in 1906, and Sherburne in 
1905, transcending either in historic episodes, 
to my mind. Of course King Edward's school 
will figure In the pageant, and if any of you hap- 
pily see it, remember that " dear old Fitz " was 
for many years a King Edward's schoolboy, 
that some of the most valued friendships of his 
life began here, and he used to say the finest 
declamation he ever listened to was Kemble's 
recitation of Hotspur's speech, " My liege, I did 
deny no prisoners," on a prize day at Bury. 

From Bury St. Edmunds Fitzgerald matric- 
ulated at Trinity College, Cambridge ; he lodged 
at No. 19 King's Parade, looking out on the 
screen of King's College. The master of Trln- 

55 



A Book of Houn 

ity at this time was Christopher Wordsworth, 
brother of the poet, a man who is described of 
" majestic appearance and donnish manners.'* 
Fitzgerald and his irreverent friends named him 
" the Meeserable Sinner," from his affected 
manner of responding in the college chapel. The 
same irreverent undergraduates called William 
Wordsworth the " Meeserable Poet," although 
Fitzgerald had previously styled him " Daddy " 
Wordsworth. 

At Cambridge Fitzgerald did no grinding, he 
made friends and enjoyed them, and it is a most 
distinguished list: Thompson, the famous mas- 
ter of Trinity (to become) ; Spedding and Kem- 
ble from the old school; William Makepeace 
Thackeray; Monckton Milnes, afterward Lord 
Houghton; and the three Tennysons, who were 
his contemporaries, but he came to know them 
better after college days. He was most regard- 
less of his appearance. His clothes were always 
in a sad state of dilapidation, and once, when 
his stately mother came in her coach and four 
to call on him, and sent her manservant to look 
him up, Fitzgerald could not see his lady 
mother, as his only pair of boots was at the cob- 
bler's. 

56 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

Thackeray and Fitzgerald were warm friends, 
and there is a charming account of their meet- 
ing in Paris, but let Thackeray tell it, as he does 
in one of his delightful " Roundabout Papers '' : 
" I remember I had but 125. left after a certain 
little Paris excursion (about which my benight- 
ed parents never knew anything) at Dover. I 
remember ordering for dinner a whiting, a beef- 
steak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was: 
dinner 75., glass of negus 25., waiter 6^., and 
only half a crown left, as I was a sinner, for the 
guard and coachman on the way to Lx)ndon! 
And I was a sinner. I had gone without leave. 
What a long, dreary, guilty journey it was from 
Paris to Calais, I remember! This was the 
Easter vacation of 1830. I always think of it 
when I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, guilt, 
remains stamped on the memory, and I feel eas- 
ier in my mind that it is liberated of the old pec- 
cadillo. I met my old college tutor only yester- 
day. He had the very next room to mine. After 
he had gone into his apartment, having shaken 
me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to 
knock at his door and say : * Doctor Bentley, I beg 
your pardon, but do you remember when I was 
going down at the Easter vacation in 1830 you 

57 



^. A Book of Hours 

asked me where I was going to spend my vaca- 
tion, and I said with my friend Slingsby, in 
Huntingtonshire ? Well, sir, I grieve to have to 
confess that I told you a fib. I had got twenty 
pounds, and was going for a lark to Paris, where 
my friend Edward was staying.' There it is 
out." And are we not all glad of this boyish es- 
capade of Thackeray's and his Paris meeting 
with Fitzgerald, since we have the confession in 
the delightful paper? 

Because Fitzgerald's " Euphranor " Is scened 
at Cambridge I will speak of it here, although 
it was not written until 1851. It is a dialogue 
on chivalry, and, as Fitzgerald says, " disfigured 
by some confounded smart writing," although 
in another place he says it is a pretty piece of 
chiseled cherry stone. But when you are at Cam- 
bridge, counting up its worthies, I shall be glad 
if you will number among them " dear old 
Fitz," and when you sit in some lovely nook 
along the banks there will be no harm if you 
take a peep at " Euphranor," and read the con- 
cluding passage which Tennyson pronounced one 
of the finest bits of prose in our literature: 

" We walked along the fields by the Church, 
crossed the Ferry, and mingled with the crowd 

55 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

upon the opposite shore ; Townsmen and Gowns- 
men, with the tassel'd Fellowcommoner sprin- 
kled here and there — Reading men and Sporting 
men — Fellows and even Masters of Colleges, 
not indifferent to the prowess of their respective 
crews — all these conversing on all sorts of top- 
ics, from the slang in BelFs ' Life * to the last 
new German Revelation, and moving in ever-^, 
changing groups down the shore of the rive^,. ^t. 
whose farther bend was a little knot of L^dre.^ 
gathered upon a green knoll, faced a^d il^umi-. 
nated by the beams of the setting siu^. Beyond 
which point was at length h^ard SQme indistinct 
shouting, which gradually increased until * They 
are off — they are coming ! * suspended other 
conversation among ourselves, and suddenly the 
head of the first boat turn'd the corner; and then 
another close upon it; and then a third; the 
crews pulling with all their might compacted 
into perfect rhythm; and the crowd on shore 
turning round to follow along with them, wav-j 
ing hats and caps, and cheering, * Bravo, St. 
John ! ' * Go it. Trinity ! ^ — the high crest and 
blowing forelock of Phidippus*s mare, and he 
himself, shouting encouragement to his crew, 
conspicuous over all — until, the boats reaching 

59 



A Book of Hours 

us, we also were caught up in the returning tide 
of spectators, and hurried back toward the goal; 
where we were just in time to see the Ensign 
of Trinity lowered from its pride of place and 
the Eagle of St. John's soaring there instead. 
Then waiting a little while to hear how the 
winner had won, and the loser lost, and watch- 
ing Phidippus engaged in eager conversation 
with his defeated brethren, I took Euphranor 
and Lexilogus under either arm, and walked 
home with them across the meadow leading to 
the town, whither the dusky groups of Gowns- 
men with all their confused voices seem'd, as it 
were, evaporating in the twilight, while a Night- 
ingale began to be heard among the flowering 
Chestnuts of Jesus." 

Fitzgerald, soon after leaving college, in Jan- 
uary, 1830, makes this forecast of his future 
life. He is writing to his beloved friend Allen: 
** Tell Thackeray that he is never to invite me 
to his house, as I intend never to go ; not that I 
would not go there rather than any place, but I 
cannot stand seeing new faces in the polite cir- 
cles. You must know I am going to become a 
great bear: and I have got all sorts of Utopian 
ideas into my head about society; these may all 
60 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

be very absurd, but I try the experiment on my- 
self, so I can do no great harm." 

Among the estates that the Fitzgeralds 
owned there was one which included the battle- 
field of Naseby, and the year after the promul- 
gation of the social principles I have quoted in 
the letter, he wrote at Naseby what is, to me, by 
far his most Interesting piece of verse, *' The 
Meadows in Spring." It was published anony- 
mously In Howe's " Table Book," and was by 
many attributed to Lamb, and Lamb admired 
It, and owned that he would gladly have been 
Its author. Fitzgerald was but twenty-two when 
this appeared. Lamb was just at his fifty-fifth 
birthday, and the spirit of tender retrospect 
which makes the poem the exquisite thing It is 
seems more natural for Lamb's maturity than 
for the youthful Fitzgerald : 

*Tis a dull sight 

To see the year dying 

When winter winds 

Set the yellow wood sighing, 
Sighing, oh! sighing. 

And the pleasant comment that Fitzgerald 
makes: "If my verses be not good, they are 
good-humored, and that Is something." A poem 

6j 



A Book of Hours 

like " The Meadows in Spring " helps to win 
our love for the man, but so does a letter like 
this: 

" London, November 27, 1832. 
" My dear Allen : The first thing I do in 
answering your letter is to tell you that I am 
angry at your saying that your conscience pricks 
you for not having written to me before. I am 
of that superior race of men that are quite con- 
tent to hear themselves talk, and read their own 
writing. But, in seriousness, I have such love of 
you, and of myself, that once every week, at 
least, I feel spurred on by a sort of gathering 
up of feelings to vent myself in a letter upon 
you: but if once I hear you say that it makes 
your conscience thus uneasy till you answer, I 
shall give it up. Upon my word, I tell you that 
I do not in the least require it. You who do not 
love writing cannot think that anyone else does : 
but I assure you that I have a very young-lady- 
like partiality to writing to those that I love." 

His letters show his reading, as he frequently 
gave criticisms on what he read, and when he 
found odd, out-of-the-way beauty in prose or 
poetry, he was often at the pains of copying it 
that his correspondents might share his delight. 
He delighted much in Shakespeare's sonnets, 
and says in one of his early letters : " Shake- 
62 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

speare's sonnets seem stuck all about my heart, 
like the ballads that used to be on the walls of 
London/* 

Perhaps one does not associate Fitzgerald 
with the lake country, but a casual visit that 
he and Tennyson paid to that region has 
been interestingly chronicled by Fitzgerald and 
Hallam Tennyson. In Hallam's *' Life of Lord 
Tennyson " he has given fascinating glimpses of 
it. It was in 1835 ^^^^ Tennyson and Fitzger- 
ald went to visit Spedding at his home near 
Bassenthwaite Water, under Skiddaw, and if 
you ever walk from Keswich to Bassenthwaite 
Water, a pretty but rather lonely walk, you may 
like to recall some of the memories of this 
merry visit to beguile the way. " The friends 
rambled about, talked, smoked, read. Late at 
night in the silent house, Tennyson would de- 
claim, in a voice like the murmur of a pinewood, 
out of a little red book, some of the poems 
afterwards to become immortal. Spedding was 
not to read aloud, because Tennyson said that 
he read too much, as If he had bees about his 
mouth. Old Mr. Spedding showed a practical 
man's contempt for the whole business. * Well, 
Mr. Fitzgerald,' he would say, * and what Is It? 

63 



A Book of Hours 

Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jim criticises, is that 
it ? ' Tennyson was sulky and wouldn't go to 
Rydal Mount to see Wordsworth, although 
Wordsworth was hospitably inclined toward 
him. Both Spedding and Fitzgerald amused 
themselves by making sketches of Tennyson, re- 
produced in Lord Tennyson's life of his father." 
This letter of Fitzgerald's recalls their visit 
to Ambleside, where they spent a week after the 
visit to Spedding: 

" Manchester, May 23, 1835. 
" Dear Allen: Alfred Tennyson stayed with 
me at Ambleside. I will say no more of Ten- 
nyson than that the more I have seen of him, 
the more cause I have had to think him great. 
His little humors and grumpinesses were so 
droll that I was always laughing: I must, how- 
ever, say further that I felt what Charles Lamb 
described a sense of depression at times from 
the overshadowing of a so much more lofty in- 
tellect than my own: this (though it may seem 
vain to say so) I have never experienced before, 
though I have often been with much greater 
intellects; but I could not be mistaken in the uni- 
versality of his mind; and perhaps I have re- 
ceived some benefit in the now more than dis- 
tinct consciousness of my dwarfishness. I think 
you should keep all this to yourself, my dear 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

Allen : I mean that it is only to you that I would 
write so freely about myself. You know most of 
my secrets, and I am not afraid of intrusting 
even my vanities to so true a man." 

Fitzgerald to Tennyson: 

" I have heard you say that you are bound 
by the want of such and such a sum, and I vow to 
the Lord that I could not have a greater pleas- 
ure than in transferring it to you on such an occa- 
sion. I could not dare say such a thing to a 
smaller man; but you are not a small man as- 
suredly; and even if you do not make use of my 
offer, you will not be offended, but put it to the 
right account. It is very difficult to persuade 
people in this world that one can part with a 
banknote without a pang." 

Then he writes of Tennyson : 

*' Resting our oars one calm day on Winder- 
mere, at the end of May, 1835, and looking 
into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred 
quoted from the lines he had lately read from 
the manuscript * Morte d^Arthur ' about the 
lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur : 

Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps 
Upon the hidden bases of the hills. 

and he would remark, * Not bad that, Fitz, is 

it'?" 

65 



A Book of Hours 

While they were in the lake country they 
met Hartley Coleridge, who was mightily taken 
with Tennyson, and wrote a sonnet to him. 

The FItzgeralds had had a country home 
at Wherstend, near Ipswich, for many years, 
but in 1835 Mr. John Fitzgerald removed to 
Boulge Hall, about two and a half miles from 
Woodbridge, a spacious Queen Anne house, sur- 
rounded by fine trees. The River Deben winds 
through the meadows of flowers. 

I have already said enough, I am sure, to 
show you that Fitzgerald had no share in the 
ambitious strivings of the time. Soon after his 
family removed to Boulge Hall he had a desire 
to have a den of his own, and he took up his 
abode In a little thatched lodge of two rooms 
standing near the Boulge Gate. Here, with a 
cat and dog and parrot, he began what he called 
a very pleasant Robinson-Crusoe sort of life. 
He was waited upon by an old couple. He in- 
stalled his books and pictures In the cottage. 
The place was a scene of desperate confusion; 
" he led a thoroughly Indolent life, though with 
dreams of literary ambition." 

He was fond of inviting Barton and Crabbe 
to his cottage, calling them *' the wits of Wood- 
ed 



Edwa? d Fitzgerald and His Friends 

bridge." About the time that the Fitzgeralds 
went to Boulge Hall to live, George Crabbe, 
the son of the poet, was appointed to the living 
of Budlield near by, and he and Edward became 
great friends, and Fitzgerald, too, was on terms 
of intimate friendship with Bernard Barton, the 
poet, whose greatest claim to fame is that he 
was the friend and correspondent of Lamb, that 
many of Lamb's most delightful letters were ad- 
dressed to him. 

Before 1842, when Fitzgerald's acquaintance 
with Carlyle began, there are sundry amusing 
references to Carlyle's works in Fitzgerald's let- 
ters. He writes to Bernard Barton: "I'm try- 
ing to get through a new book much in fashion 
— Carlyle's * French Revolution ' — written in 
a German style. An Englishman writes of 
French Revolution in a German style! People 
say the book is very deep ; but it appears to me 
that the meaning seems deep from lying under 
mystical language." 

To Thompson (afterwards Master of Trin- 
ity) he writes: " Have you read poor Carlyle's 
raving book about heroes? Of course you have, 
or I would ask you to buy my copy. I don't like 
to live with it in the house. It smolders ! " But 

67 



A Book of Hours 

it was not long after writing thus that Fitzger- 
ald met " Gurlyle," as Thackeray called the 
Sage of Chelsea. Thackeray never seemed con- 
tent until he had transformed a name Into some 
less conventional form. It was under Thack- 
eray's wing that Fitzgerald called upon Carlyle 
In 1842. I have told you that Fitzgerald's fa- 
ther owned the estate which Included the battle- 
field of Naseby. When Carlyle was writing his 
life of Cromwell he had visited the field, and an 
obelisk erected by Fitzgerald's father merely to 
mark the highest ground, they had supposed 
marked the place where the hottest engagement 
took place, and had gone away satisfied, not hav- 
ing surveyed the real battlefield at all. Fitzger- 
ald, guided by local tradition, conducted some 
excavations at Naseby, and found the remains 
of many skeletons. Carlyle was much excited 
by the discoveries, but Fitzgerald did not care 
much for " bone rummaging," as he called It, 
and did not continue the excavations. 

Fitzgerald continued to live at the little 
lodge, reading, writing, and visiting his hum- 
ble country friends. In 1849 Bernard Barton 
died, leaving his daughter very Ill-provided for. 
Fitzgerald appears to have promised Bernard 
68 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

Barton that the daughter should be provided 
for, and this was looked upon as tantamount to 
an offer of marriage. I think I will dispose of 
that matter at once. Fitzgerald married Lucy 
Barton, but it was a most unfortunate affair; 
they were altogether unsulted to each other, and 
in a few weeks they separated, Fitzgerald mak- 
ing a very handsome settlement upon her, and 
no blame attached to either, except it had been 
so much better had they never had the unhappy 
experience. 

When Fitzgerald^s brother John succeeded 
to the estates in 185 1, Edward retreated from 
his cottage; he could not bear the proximity of 
his brother, with whom he had no tastes in 
common, and he went to live at Farllngay Hall, 
near Woodbrldge. In 1854 Carlyle, being over- 
worked, announced his intention of coming to 
stay with Fitzgerald. It is mingled amusement 
and consternation that Fitzgerald feels at the 
prospect of entertaining the sage, and he writes 
to Mrs. Carlyle : " Only, dear Mrs. Carlyle, let 
me know what Carlyle is to Eat, Drink, and 
Avoid ! '* Carlyle writes, with entire absence of 
thought for anybody except himself: " It will 
be pleasant to see your face at the end of my 

69 



A Book of Hours 

shrieking, mad (and to me quite horrible) rail 
operations. I hope to get to Farlingay not long 
after four o'clock, and have a quiet mutton- 
chop in due time, and have a ditto pipe or pipes ; 
nay, I could even have a bathe if there was any 
sea water left in the evening." 

Carlyle afterwards wrote that Fitzgerald 
** discharged the sacred rites of hospitality with 
a kind of Irish zeal or piety." Fitzgerald him- 
self was a vegetarian, and most abstemious 
liver; but in no way required others to follow 
his regimen. When he had guests, he would 
regale them upon the best that could be had 
— oysters and ale — while he himself would 
pace up and down the room munching an 
apple or a turnip, and drinking long draughts 
of milk. 

Living his secluded life, Fitzgerald saw very 
few of his old friends, and he and Thackeray 
drifted apart, but though they almost never 
wrote during the last years of Thackeray's life, 
we have the sweetest proof that Thackeray cher- 
ished Fitzgerald's friendship. Toward the close 
of his life his daughter asked him which of his 
friends he cared most for, and he answered: 
" Why, dear old Fitz, to be sure, and Brook- 
70 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

field." And then do you not all remember the 
letter that Thackeray wrote Fitzgerald on the 
eve of his departure for America? A letter I 
have read so many, many times, and never with- 
out swelling throat. 

" I should like my daughters to remember 
that you are the best and oldest friend their fa- 
ther ever had, and that you should act as such, 
as my literary executor, and so forth. Does not 
this sound gloomy? Well, who knows what 
Fate has in store, and I feel not at all downcast, 
and very grave and solemn, just at the brink of 
a great voyage — and the great comfort I have 
in thinking about my dear old boy is that recol- 
lection of our youth when we loved each other, 
as I now do while I write farewell." 

And after Thackeray's death, Fitzgerald 
writes to Samuel Lawrence, in 1864: 

" I am surprised almost to find how much I 
am thinking of him ; so little as I had seen him 
for the last ten years; not once for the last five. 
I had been told — by you, for one — that he was 
spoiled. I am glad therefore that I have scarce 
seen him since he was * old Thackeray.' I keep 
reading his * Newcomes ' of nights, and, as it 
were, hear him saying so much in it; and it 
seems to me as if he might be coming up my 

71 



A Book of Hours 

stairs and about to come (singing) into my 
room, as In Old Charlotte Street thirty years 
ago." 

To Thompson, of Trinity, he writes : 

" My interest in him is a little gone from 
hearing he had become somewhat, spoiled; 
which, also, some of his later writings hinted to 
me of themselves. But his letters and former 
works bring me back the old Thackeray. I had 
never read * Pendennis ' and * The Newcomes ' 
since their appearance till this last month. They 
are wonderful. Fielding's seems to me coarse 
work In comparison. I have, indeed, been think- 
ing of little this last month but of these Books 
and their Author. Of his Letters to me, I have 
kept some Dozen, just to mark the different 
Epochs of our Acquaintance." 

And this In reference to Anne Thackeray: 

" Just as I was going out of the Royal Acad- 
emy, who should come up to me but Annie 
Thackeray, who took my hands as really glad to 
see her father's old friend. I am sure she was, 
and I was taken aback somehow and, out of 
sheer awkwardness, began to tell her that I 
didn't care for her new Novel! And then, after 
she had left her party to come to me, she ran 
off." 

Could we have a better picture of the shy 

72 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

recluse than this self-revelation in the letter? 
He was overcome with a sense of his apparent 
unfriendliness, then he went back to the Acad- 
emy to look up Anne Thackeray, but could not 
find her. '* I have been so vext with myself! " 
and it is easy to fancy the vexation that the 
kindly, friendly man felt at the awkwardness 
of it all. 

But Fitzgerald himself was to live on many 
years — twenty years after the death of Thack- 
eray. In i860 he came to Woodbridge to live, 
in the market place over the gunsmith's. How 
much interest one has in that market place I Here 
he lived for more than a dozen years. In the 
meantime he bought a place just on the edge 
of the village, which he called Little Grange, 
but he seemed disinclined to use it, and for years 
it was left to the occupancy of his nieces and 
such relatives as liked to use it for a few months 
of the year; even when he went there to live, he 
kept but one room for himself. 

But as one waits at the Bull Inn for a trap 
to drive out to Boulge she may likely recall to 
herself some of the stories she has heard of the 
famous host of the inn. There Tennyson and 
his son visited Fitzgerald. His house undergo- 

73 



A Book of Hours 

ing repairs, he put them up at the Bull. Wood- 
bridge should feel honored, Fitzgerald told the 
landlord, and the landlord asked Archdeacon 
Groome for explanation, and the archdeacon 
said: " He is the Poet Laureate,'' and the land- 
lord said indifferently: "He may be that, but 
he doesn't fare to know much about horses, I 
showed him my stables I " 

And when one explores the market place, she 
looks for the rooms over the gunsmith's where 
Fitzgerald lodged for years with Berry. But 
Berry became engaged to a widow, and Fitzger- 
ald most impolitically remarked that " Old Ber- 
ry would now have to be called * Old Goose- 
berry.' " This unwise remark was repeated to 
the widow, and the result was that Fitzgerald 
was ordered to quit. Berry had some compunc- 
tion about turning out his old friend and lodger, 
but the widow, fearing that his courage would 
give way, remained at the bottom of the stairs, 
calling out: "Be firm. Berry! Remind him of 
what he called you." 

During these Woodbridge days he spent 
much time on the sea, which he always loved, 
and which he best loved when it was rough. In 
the summer months he spent a deal of time cruis- 

7i 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Frienas 

ing about in his yacht, which he named " The 
Scandal," because, he said, that was the princi- 
pal product of Woodbridge. He was sometimes 
accompanied by a friend or two, and always by 
plenty of books. It was in the cabin of his boat 
that he translated much of Calderon and Ms- 
chvlus. 

Fitzgerald was not a traveler, and some very 
apocryphal stories are told apropos of his in- 
curiosity and unwillingness to change from his 
usual course. It is told that he made a sailing 
trip over to Holland to see Paul Potter's '*BuU" 
— but when he arrived in Rotterdam there was 
such a good breeze for returning to England 
that he immediately set sail for home, and didn't 
go to The Hague at all. It's a capital story, but 
his own experience was a little different — though 
he did not see The Hague Gallery. He went to 
The Hague, but the gallery was closed and was 
not to be opened the next day — ** So in Rage 
and Despair I tore back to Rotterdam." 

So Fitzgerald, " the peaceable, affectionate, 
and ultra-modest man," as Carlyle calls him, 
lived his innocent far niente life. He enjoined 
upon his friends not to come out of their way 
to call on him, but if they were passing through 

75 



A Book of Hours 

to call. One day Tennyson was passing through 
and called — ^but let Fitzgerald himself tell it, as 
he does in one of his delightful letters to Fanny 
Kemble ; 

" And now, who should send in his card to 
me last week — but the old Poet himself — he 
and his elder son, Hallam, passing through 
Woodbridge from a tour in Norfolk. ' Dear old 
Fitz,* ran the card in pencil. * I am passing 
thro\* I had not seen him in twenty years, and 
what really surprised me was that we fell at once 
into the old humor, as if we had only been 
parted twenty days instead of so many years. 
He stayed two days, and went over the same old 
grounds of debate, told some of the same old 
stories, and so all was well. I suppose I may never 
see him again, and so I suppose both thought 
as the Rail carried him away. I liked Hallam 
much, unaffected, unpretending, no slang, none 
of young England's nonchalance^ speaking of 
his Father as Papa, never calling him Governor, 
and tending him with great care, love, and dis- 
cretion.'' 

Lord Tennyson in the memoir of his father 
has given a pleasant account of this visit. He 
says the views that Fitzgerald expressed on lit- 
erature were interesting, but the old man never 

76 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

got off his own platform to look at the work of 
modern authors. Hallam Tennyson says some- 
where that Fitzgerald never approved of any- 
thing his friends wrote unless he first saw it In 
manuscript. He surely did not let his frlendli* 
ness blind him to qualities to which his literary 
standard objected. " Old Fitzcrochet! " he calls 
himself In a letter to Tennyson, when he is writ- 
ing some strictures on " Queen Mary." — '^ Still 
your old Fitzcrochet, you see! And so will be 
to the end, I suppose." And while Tennyson 
was visiting him at Woodbridge he told the 
poet frankly that he had written nothing worth 
while since 1842, adding that he had ceased to 
be a poet and become an artist. 

Tennyson seemed to be much Impressed by 
the picture of Fitzgerald sitting under the trees 
at Little Grange, and the pigeons alighting on 
Fitzgerald's head, courtesying and cooing, and 
he put the scene In the dedication to " Tireslas." 

But before the poem was published Fitzger- 
ald had been taken to his last rest under the 
tower of the little church of Boulge. He had 
fallen asleep on the night of June 14, 1883, and 
In the morning his friend found It was the last 
sleep. Then Tennyson added an epilogue to the 

77 



A Book of Hours 

poem, which concludes, you remember, with the 
line : 

One height and one far-shining fire. 
This IS the dedication : 

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange, 

Where once I tarried for a while ^ 
Glance at the wheeling orb of change ^ 

And greet it with a kindly smile; 
Whom yet I see as there you sit 

Beneath your sheltering garden tree. 
And while your doves about you flit, 

And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee, 
Or on our head their rosy feet. 

As if they knew your diet spares 
Whatever moved in that full sheet. 

Let down to Peter at his prayers; 
Who live on milk and meal and grass. 
And once for ten long weeks I tried 
Your table of Pythagoras, 

And seemed at first a thing enskied, 
{As Shakespeare has it) airy light 

To float above the ways of men. 
Then fell from that half-spiritual height, 

ChiWd till I tasted flesh again. 
One night when Earth was winter-black, 
And all the heavens flashed in frost; 
And on me, half-asleep, came back 
That wholesome heat the flood had lost, 

78 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

And set me climbing icy capes 

And glaciers, over which there roWd 
To meet me long-arm* d vines with grapes 

Of Eschol hugeness; for the cold 
Without and warmth within me wrought 

To mold the dream; hut none can say 
That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought 

Who reads your golden Eastern lay 
Than which I know no version done 

In English more divinely well; 
A planet equal to the sun 

Which cast it, that large infidel, 
Your Omar, and your Omar drew 

Full-handed plaudits from our best 
In modern letters, and from two 

Old friends outvaluing all the rest. 
Two voices heard on earth no more; 

But we old friends are still alive, 
And I am nearing seventy-four. 

While you have touched at seventy-five, 
And so I send a birthday line 

Of greeting; and my son, who dipt 
In some forgotten book of mine 

With sallow scraps of manuscript. 
And dating many a year ago. 

Has hit on this which you take. 
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know 

Less for its own than for the sake 
Of one recalling gracious times 

79 



A Book of Hours 

When, in our younger London days, 
You found some merit in my rhymes 

And I more pleasure in your praise. 
One height and one far-shining fire, \ 

Then the epilogue : ^l 

And while I fancied that my friend ' 

For this brief idyll would require ■ 

A less diffuse and opulent end, 

And would defend his judgment well 
If I should deem it overnice. 

The tolling of his funeral bell 
Broke on my pagan Paradise, 

And mixed the dreams of classic times 
And all the phantoms of the dream. 

With present grief, and made the rhymes 
That missed his living welcome seem 

Like would-be guests, an hour too late 
Who down the highway moving on 

With easy laughter, find the gate 
Is bolted and the master gone. 

Gone into darkness, full light 
Of friendship! fast, in sleep, away 

By night, into the deeper night! 

I thought It well to round out the tale of this 

friendship, though I yet had more to tell you of 

Fitzgerald. For nearly threescore years these 

men had been friends, and Tennyson, like 

80 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

Thackeray, gave a first place to " dear old 
FItz." 

During the last dozen years of his life Fitz- 
gerald wrote many letters to Fanny Kemble, and 
they are published by themselves in a most read- 
able volume. When Mrs. Kemble in her " Old 
Woman*s Gossip " wrote some memories of the 
Fitzgeralds, Edward begged that when they 
were given book form the passage relating to 
him should be dropped, as the world would 
scarcely care to know of him, and he did not de- 
serve her words. In his own copy of her work 
he pasted over the pages relating to himself. 
But since Mrs. Kemble so delightfully summa- 
rizes his life, I am going to give it as a brief 
recapitulation, particularly as she itemizes what 
I have designedly omitted — all his literary work. 

'' One member of the family, Edward Fitz- 
gerald, has remained my friend till this day. His 
parents and mine are dead. Of his brothers and 
sisters I retain no knowledge, but with him I 
still keep up an affectionate and, to me, valuable 
and interesting correspondence. He was distin- 
guished from the rest of his family, and, indeed, 
from most people, by the possession of very rare 
intellectual and artistic gifts. A poet, a painter, 
a musician, an admirable scholar and writer, if 

8i 



A Book of Hours 

he had not shunned notoriety as sedulously as 
most people seek it, he would have achieved a 
foremost place among the eminent men of his 
day, and left a name second to that of very few 
of his contemporaries. His life was spent in lit- 
erary leisure, or literary labors of love of singular 
excellence, which he never cared to publish be- 
yond the circle of his intimate friends. * Euphra- 
nor * and * Polonius ' are full of keen wisdom, 
fine observation and profound thought, sterling 
philosophy, written in the purest, simplest, and 
raciest English ; noble translations or rather free 
adaptations of Calderon's finest dramas, a splen- 
did paraphrase of the * Agamemnon ' of iEs- 
chylus, which fills the reader with regret that he 
should not have Englished the whole of the 
great trilogy with the same severe sublimity. In 
America, this gentleman is better known by his 
translation or adaptation (how much more it is 
his own than the author's, I should like to know 
if I were Irish) of Omar Khayyam, the astron- 
omer poet of Persia. While these were Edward 
Fitzgerald's studies and pursuits, he led a curious 
life of almost entire estrangement from society, 
preferring the companionship of the rough sail- 
ors and fishermen of the Suffolk coast to that of 
lettered folk. He lived with them in the most 
friendly intimacy, helping them in their sea ven- 
tures and cruising about with one, an especially 
fine sample of his sort, in a small fishing smack, 

82 . 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

which Edward Fitzgerald^s bounty had set 
afloat, and in which the translator of Calderon 
and iEchylus passed his time, better pleased with 
the intercourse of the captain and crew of his 
small fishing craft than with that of more edu- 
cated and sophisticated humanity." 

There is one word in Mrs. Kemble*s article 
to which I object, and that Is estrangement. It 
might be Inferred from that, although that im- 
plying was not Mrs. Kemble's intention, that he 
was at war with his fellows, or that he was a 
misanthrope, and we that know Fitzgerald know 
how true is Mr. Groome's statement: "There 
was a vein of misanthropy toward men in the 
abstract, but tender-hearted sympathy for actual 
men and women; being the reverse of Carlyle's 
description of the philanthropist, * One who 
loves man in the abstract, but Is Intolerant of 
Jack and Tom.* '* 

There is one of Fitzgerald's friends of whom 
I have made no mention, whose influence on 
Fitzgerald was most significant, and to whom 
indirectly we owe thanks for the exquisite quat- 
rains which make Fitzgerald's most Important 
literary work. It was as early as 1846 that Fitz- 
gerald made the acquaintance of Mr. Cowell, 

83 



A Book of Hours 

afterwards Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge. 
Professor Cowell had great gifts for literature, 
and it was he that introduced Fitzgerald to 
Omar Khayyam. Professor Cowell said humor- 
ously of himself that his chief function was to 
encourage other people to work. Fitzgerald be- 
gan to read the Oriental poets with Cowell, and 
in 1856 "he was working in his easy way at 
Omar Khayyam, reading, enjoying, and adapt- 
mg. 

It seems to me so entirely unnecessary to tell 
you any of the circumstances regarding the pub- 
lishing of Fitzgerald's wonderful free adapta- 
tions from Omar Khayyam. It surely can have 
escaped no one's knowing, all the detail has 
been told again and again in introductions to 
editions of the " Rubaiyat," and there remains 
nothing new to be told. The first edition was 
published by Quaritch in 1859, and fell perfect- 
ly flat, so that the undesired books were offered 
among a lot of unsalable volumes — ^with the leg- 
end, " All these a penny each." Then the next 
chapter in the romance is that two young poets, 
Rossetti was one, chanced upon the undesired 
book, and, discovering its rare worth, invested 
several pennies, and the book was talked about 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

among their friends. When one of those little 
books of 1859 strays into the hands of a book- 
seller now, he knows he may demand any price 
he will for it. I have not followed the buying 
and selling of this issue of 1859, but I remem- 
ber very well that In 1898 rather more than a 
hundred dollars was paid for one of the little 
volumes, and Mr. Quaritch, the original pub- 
lisher, was the purchaser. 

The edition was unsigned, and Carlyle was 
twelve years finding out that his friend Fitzger- 
ald was the translator of Omar, and the circum- 
stances are interesting. In September, 1863, 
Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to the translator 
of the Rubaiyat of Omar, which he intrusted 
to Mrs. Burne-Jones, who, after an interval of 
nearly ten years, handed it to Mr. Charles Eliot 
Norton. By him it was transmitted to Carlyle, 
who sent it to Fitzgerald with the following 
letter : 

*' Chelsea, 14 April, 1873. 
" Dear Fitzgerald: Mr. Norton " (he speaks 
in most complimentary terms of Mr. Norton), 
'* with whom I have had pleasant walks, dia- 
logues, and other communications of late 
months, in the course of which he brought to 
my knowledge for the first time your notable 

85 



A Book of Hours 

* Omar Khayyam/ insisted on giving me a copy 
from the third edition, which I now possess and 
duly prize. From him, too, by careful cross- 
questioning, I identified, beyond dispute, the 
hidden Fitzgerald, the translator; and indeed 
found that his complete silence and unique mod- 
esty in regard to said meritorious and successful 
performance was simply a feature of my own 
Edward F! The translation is excellent; the 
book itself a kind of jewel in its way; I do Nor- 
ton's mission without the least delay, as you per- 
ceive. Ruskin's message to you passes through 
my hands sealed. I am ever your affectionate 

" T. Carlyle." 

Then ttn years after Ruskin's writing Fitz- 
gerald wrote his thanks. 

After the third edition, his friend, W. B. 
Donne wrote: " I am so delighted at the glory 
Edward Fitzgerald has gained by his transla- 
tion of the * Rubaiyat ' of Omar Khayyam. It 
is full time that Fitz should be disinterred and 
exhibited to the world as one of the most gifted 
of Britons." 

Not only do you know all the circumstances 

attending the publication, but you know all 

about Omar, the tentmaker, as his poetical name 

tells us he was at one time. He was an astrono- 

86 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

mer-poet of Persia, In the eleventh century, 
who, as Fitzgerald put It, " having failed (how- 
ever mistakenly) of finding any Providence but 
Destiny, and any world but this, set about mak- 
ing the best of it, preferring rather to soothe the 
soul through the senses into acquiescence with 
things as he saw them than to perplex it with 
vain disquietude after what might be.'* 

I like to call to the attention of readers of the 
quatrains that Omar was living at the time of 
the Battle of Hastings, that event so meaningful 
to all English-speaking people. 

Yea thou wert singing when that arrow clave 

Through helm and brain of him 
Who could not save 

His England, even of Harold, Godwin's 
son. 
The high tide murmurs by the hero's grave^ 

His was the age of Faith, when all the West 
Looked to the priest for torment or for rest; 

And thou wert living then, and didst not heed 
The Saint who banned thee, or the Saint who 
blessed. 

How matchless is the first quatrain as it was 
in the first edition : 

87 



A Book of Hours 

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night, 
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to 
Flight. 

And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught 
The Sultan* s Turret in a Noose of Light, 

There are five hundred or more of the " Ru- 
baiyat " of Omar, but Fitzgerald has given 
about a hundred in his final and fourth edition; 
he says many of the quatrains " are mashed 
together and something lost, I doubt not, of 
Omar^s simplicity.'* A commentator (Way) 
says : " What modesty ! Fitzgerald has crystal- 
lized the five hundred quatrains of the original 
into the one hundred and one of the fourth edi- 
tion.*' 

But had he not given us his beautiful quat- 
rains he would still have given hostage for our 
love and admiration in his letters, one of the 
most delightful collections in existence. I most 
advisedly gave this hour the name " With Ed- 
ward Fitzgerald and his Friends in East Anglia 
and Elsewhere,'* after thinking what would 
probably be included in and omitted from the 
hour. While I had no intention to ignore Fitz- 
gerald's literary work, I was without intention 
to emphasize it. It was my wish to emphasize 
88 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

his friendships, which, I think, are among the 
most interesting and tenderly endearing in the 
range of English literature. Not only do they 
make Fitzgerald more interesting, but they re- 
veal a depth of sweet friendliness in each of his 
friends. I love to spend my time in the friendly 
atmosphere of Fitzgerald^s letters. It is not 
alone for his spirit, but the reflection of the spirit 
of friendship in others. 

Although Fitzgerald^s life was spent for the 
most part in East Anglia, we have seen that 
Cambridge will have an added interest if we re- 
call the remarkable group of young men that 
were undergraduates at Trinity at the beginning 
of the second quarter of the nineteenth century; 
that among the literary associations of Lake 
Land we may recall the visit of Tennyson and 
Fitzgerald, when Tennysons early gems were in 
the process of making, and I could have told 
you of meeting after meeting in London with all 
these beloved people. There was one notable day 
when Thackeray, Dickens, Tennyson, and Fitz- 
gerald went driving together — " a precious car- 
riage ful,'* Fitzgerald comments. 

One of Fitzgerald^s last journeys was to Chel- 
sea, about a month before his death, and his 

89 



A Book of Hours 

mention of the visit Is In the last letters he wrote 
to Mrs. Kemble and to Professor Norton: " I 
wanted to see the statue on the embankment and 
the old No. 5 Cheyne Row, which I had not 
seen for five-and-twenty years. The statue I 
thought very good, though looking somewhat 
small and ill set off by its dingy surroundings. 
And No. 5 (now 24), which had cost Jane Car- 
lyle so much of her life to make habitable for 
him, now all neglected, unswept, ungamished, 
uninhabited, * To Let.' " He was greatly moved 
by these scenes and the memories they evoked. 

My last visit to these Chelsea shrines was the 
happiest I have ever made. The Carlyle house 
is now a memorial, and why the special privi- 
lege was vouchsafed us I know not, but my 
friends and I were Invited to tea in the kitchen — 
in the very kitchen where Carlyle and Tennyson 
had smoked their pipes In absolute silence and 
had such a thoroughly enjoyable evening. 

But to return to East Anglia, the country that 
Fitzgerald loved and knew, its pleasant blossom- 
ing meadows, its winding streams and shelter- 
ing nooks. It Is the country of the two great 
English landscapists. Constable and Gainsbor- 
ough; both were East Angllans, and repeatedly 
90 



Edward Fitzgerald and His Friends 

portrayed on canvas the beauties of their native 
corner of England. 

Fitzgerald was much Interested In the racy 
vernacular of East Anglla, and made careful 
study of it; his knowledge of the fisher folk was 
so intimate that Tennyson applied to him for de- 
tail when he was writing '* Enoch Arden." To 
me, recalling East Anglia, with its many water- 
ways and its abundance of flowers, it seems most 
suited to Fitzgerald, with his delight in boating, 
and his love for flowers ; always I think of It as 
" a pleasant water'd land, a land of roses." 

Mr. Groome describes Fitzgerald as " a tall 
sea-bronzed man. He could be seen later In life 
walking down into Woodbrldge with an old In- 
verness cape, slippers on feet, and a handker- 
chief tied over his hat; yet one always recog- 
nized in him the Hidalgo. Never was there a 
more perfect gentleman; eccentric he certainly 
was, as was all his family." 

I was guest in an old Flemish house In Span- 
ish Ipswich, whose ceilings were adorned with 
cherubs and lilies and roses which marked the 
decoration of the early seventeenth century, and 
after my days of roaming about the country I 
met In the evening people who remembered Fltz- 

91 



A Book of Hours 

gerald, his oddities, his kindnesses, and his ap- 
pearance, as he went about wrapped in his In- 
verness cape. 

It was a very pleasant summer day when I 
went out to Boulge churchyard to visit the 
grave of Fitzgerald. A beautiful path shaded 
with magnificent trees leads to the church, and 
in the small yard one easily finds the grave of 
Edward Fitzgerald — simply marked with date 
of birth and death, and the verse : " It is He that 
hath made us and not we ourselves." On the 
grave there was blooming a rose, whose parent 
tree grew over the grave of Omar Khayyam at 
Naishapur — the most poetic tribute that poets 
could make to a poet, I have always thought. 

Ten years after Fitzgerald died the Omar 
Khayyam Club planted the rose tree over Fitz- 
gerald's grave, Theodore Watts Dunton giving 
these lines: 

Hear us, ye winds, North, East and West and 
South! 

This granite covers him whose golden mouth 
Made wiser ev^n the work of wisdom* s King, 

Blow softly o^er the grave of Omar^s herald. 
Till roses rich of Omar^s dust shall spring 

From richer dust of Suffolk* s rare Fitzgerald, 

02 



OXFORD'S WALKS AND 
GARDENS 



WHEN I ask you to listen to an hour's 
talk on Oxford, it is not Oxford ar- 
chitecturally or historically that I 
shall try to present, nor is it the history of any 
one college, nor yet the university, but it is Ox- 
ford of romantic and literary memories, entire- 
ly distinct from the life and action of to-day. 
Obviously, the contemporary and undergradu- 
ate will have no part in my tale, but yesterday's 
poet, the hero of bygone tale, the heroine of 
centuries of tradition — these are they whom I 
wish to bring before you. 

To attempt to give any notion of the charm 
of Oxford is entirely vain. " Know you the se- 
cret none can utter ? " the poet asks. Though 
many know the secret — that is, many know the 
charm of Oxford — I have never yet known it 
adequately set forth. A brief phrase is often 
happier in suggestion of Oxford's great charm 
than a long description. Cardinal Newman says 

93 



A Book of Hours 

of the city he so loved: " As beautiful as youth, 
as venerable as age." Beauty and age do con- 
tribute to the charm. Matthew Arnold, another 
son of Oxford, says : " Lovely at all times she 
lies, lovely to-night." " That sweet city with 
its dreaming spires," says William Morris. 

I know several vantage grounds, Mesopo- 
tamia, Headington Hill, Shotover, sometimes 
Magdalen Bridge, from which I have realized 
Andrew Lang's sentiment, " Oxford looks like 
a fairy city of the Arabian Nights, a town of 
palaces and princesses, rather than proctors." 

I shall conclude this hour with a mention of 
Matthew Arnold's threnodies which enshrine 
the beautiful country about Oxford, and it will 
not be inappropriate if here at the beginning of 
the hour I call to your mind a prose tribute he 
has paid to Oxford. He is speaking of the search 
for truth, and says : " We are all seekers still 1 
Seekers often make mistakes, and I wish mine 
to redound to my own discredit only, and not to 
touch Oxford. Beautiful city! So venerable, so 
lovely, so unravaged by the fierce Intellectual 
life of our century, so serene ! And yet steeped 
In sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens 
to the moonlight, and whispering from her tow- 

94^ 



Oxford' s Walks and Gardens 

ers the last enchantments of the Middle Ages, 
who will deny that Oxford, by her Ineffable 
charm keeps ever calling us nearer to the true 
goal of all of us, to the Ideal, to perfection, to 
beauty, In a word, which Is only truth seen from 
another side? " This Is from the preface to the 
first series of " Essays on Criticism." 

" It is the Oxford that lies spreading its gar- 
dens to the moonlight and whispering from Its 
towers the last enchantment of the Middle 
Ages ** that has the special appeal to me. I know 
Oxford at several seasons, during Term, when 
the usual aspect of Term is on, when It is re- 
splendent with color and full of the animated 
joyous company attracted by Eights; but I pre- 
fer It when the college barges are deserted, and 
the rivers are left to the resident Oxonian, and 
the city is wrapped In the drowsiness of the 
Long Vacation. 

In Charles Lamb's essay, " Oxford In Vaca- 
tion," he speaks of the sense of possession that 
one has In walking through the colleges and gar- 
dens in vacation. Indulging in one of his pleas- 
ant concerts, he says that If one in his youth has 
been denied the sweets of academic Instruction, 
he may here play the gentleman, enact the stu- 

9S 



A Book of Hours 

dent, fancy himself of any degree or calling he 
pleases. In a mood of humility, he may enact 
the servitor; if the peacock vein rises, he may 
strut a gentleman commoner, or in grave mo- 
ments proceed master of arts. 

It was not in fancying myself in various sta- 
tions that I had my greatest pleasure, as I 
strolled unmolested about Oxford, " peeped 
into sculleries redolent of antique hospitality and 
looked at spits which had cooked for Chaucer." 
It was not myself in various guises that I saw, 
but Oxford became a rallying ground for fair 
women, brave men, the poets, the sages who had 
known Oxford in the generations agone. 

So as I strolled by the Cherwell, of Isis, the 
rivers that give the beautiful frame to Oxford, 
or walked under the limes at Trinity, or sat 
'neath the giant catalpa at New College, or in 
the cedar shade of Wadham, or as I climbed 
the Cumnor Hill or crossed the ferry at Bab- 
lock-hythe, although I appeared alone, I had 
really the best of company — ^memories of ro- 
mance, poetry, history, that rush out from one's 
reading at touch of Oxford. 

Oxford lies in low country; it is almost sur- 
rounded by the two rivers, the Cherwell and Isis, 

96 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

as the Thames is called where it flows past the 
University. I think no people love their rivers 
more than do the Oxonians, and in summer 

Young and old come forth to play, 
On a sunshine holiday. 

Many a time I have seen a family party, in 
which several generations have been represent- 
ed, give over the day to the river, the Cherwell 
preferred for its quiet, sequestered nooks. It is 
delightful to row along the sinuous river, lilies 
float on the surface, the trees bend and dip over 
the river, here and there are clumps of beautiful 
forget-me-not, may be, and when I have seen a 
hand go out to pluck it, I have uttered the re- 
straining " Don't,'' because I am Emersonian to 
the degree that I can " love the wild rose and 
leave it on its stalk." The Thames about Ox- 
ford has numberless attractions. 

Mey is not far away; if one walks along the 
turning path she comes ere long to this mill, so 
many times the subject of the artist's pencil, the 
poet's pen, and if we have come to the mill we 
shall be unwise if we do not go once again to 
Mey Church, though it may be for the twen- 
tieth time. It is a most interesting old Norman 

97 



A Book of Hours 

church, the stone carving of the doors being un- 
usually interesting. Of many visits here, one 
stands out with especial clearness — it was a day 
in Eights' Week when I spent a serene hour here 
watching the starlings build in the wall and 
tower. Antiquarian taste, this bird has to select 
the Norman structure for nesting. The busy lit- 
tle house builder gave never an eye to the soli- 
tary under the yew, but builded on and on. The 
cuckoo shouted, and here amidst the flowers and 
birds I had a happy hour. 

Here are some bits farther up the river at 
Nuneham Courtney, which I have reached by 
boat or by walking, the picturesque cottages I 
would go far to see were there no other feature 
that is attractive. 

Now, if you will trust to my guidance, I shall 
like to take you about Oxford, strolling about 
its walks and rambling through its gardens, and 
we will start from my favorite rooms in Holly- 
well Street directly opposite one of the entrances 
to New College Gardens, and I shall resist the 
allurement of New College Garden this time, 
but perhaps remembering to tell you that a part 
of the ancient wall of Oxford is incorporated 
into the wall of New College Garden. 

98 



Oxford* s Walks and Gardens 

Our first objective point Is Magdalen Bridge 
— and here I shall begin my rehearsal of associa- 
tions after I call your attention to that name 
" Maudhn," the universal pronunciation, al- 
though my landlady, a most delightful creature, 
says: " I say Magdalen, but the silly softs, they 
say * Maudlin.' '' However, the silly softs are 
the ruling majority, and It was only on that one 
occasion that I ever knew her superior to the 
rest of the world. 

Of Magdalen College and Its association I 
shall speak later, but here on Magdalen Bridge 
I am very likely to recall Shelley, who was an 
undergraduate at University College during the 
short time that he was in residence In Oxford. 
University College, according to tradition, was 
founded by Alfred the Great. We have most 
Interesting glimpses of Shelley given by his 
friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who was his 
college friend, and shared Shelley's expulsion 
when his too-daring views made his presence un- 
deslred by college authorities. 

** One Sunday we had been reading Plato to- 
gether so diligently that the usual hour of exer- 
cise passed away unpercelved; we sallied forth 
hastily to take the air for half an hour before 

99 



A Book of Hours 

dinner. In the middle of Magdalen Bridge we 
met a woman with a child in her arms. Shelley 
was more attentive to our conduct in a life that 
was past, or to come, than to a decorous regu- 
lation of the present. With abrupt dexterity he 
caught hold of the child. The mother, who 
might well fear that it was about to be thrown 
over the parapet of the bridge into the sedgy 
waters below, held it fast by its long train. * Will 
your baby tell us anything about preexistence, 
madam ? ' he asked with a piercing tone and 
wistful look. The mother made no reply, but 
perceiving Shelley's object was not murderous, 
but altogether harmless, she dismissed her ap- 
prehensions, and relaxed her hold. * Will your 
baby tell us anything about preexistence, mad- 
am ? ' he repeated with unabated earnestness. 
' He cannot speak, sir,' said the mother ear- 
nestly, and said further that he was only a few 
weeks old. Shelley's argument that that was 
only a greater reason why he should tell 
about preexistence met with no comprehension 
from the mother, who firmly asserted, * I have 
never heard him speak, nor any child of his 
age.'" 

The walks about Oxford are increasingly in- 

100 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

teresting to us when we know that every Inch 
of the ground was known to these two young 
men. In the rivers and lakelets about, Shelley 
used to Indulge his peculiar whim for sailing 
paper boats. He would start out with a book, Its 
fly-leaf would go to make the boat. The story 
Is told that, all other paper lacking, he resorted 
to bank notes, but Hogg says that Is a myth. In 
the Bodleian Library, with Its rich treasures, to 
me one of the most Interesting collections Is the 
case of Shelley relics, a miniature showing the 
marvelous fairness of the young poet, personal 
possessions of one kind or another, but the chief 
interest was the volume of Sophocles that was 
found in Shelley^s pocket when the body was 
washed on the Italian shore after the capsizing 
of the Ill-starred Ariel, I have thought how In- 
teresting this case must be to young poets. If I 
have time later I wish to come to Shelley once 
again to tell you of his favorite walk, worthily 
the favorite walk of any poet or lover of the 
beautiful, the walk over Shotover Plain, but 
from University College it Is but a step to Oriel, 
which we need not pass from any lack of asso- 
ciation, and to me the chiefest Interest is that 
Dr. Newman was here a tutor and fellow. 

101 



A Book of Hours 

It Is not the polemical work of Newman that 
I recall, but what I have heard of his personal 
charm and grace. He is inseparably associated 
with a great religious movement. Before he 
came to Oriel he was an undergraduate at Trin- 
ity. Whenever the lover of all things that are 
quiet and gentle and true, in life and literature, 
visits Oxford, he will find himself wondering 
whether the snapdragon still grows outside the 
windows of the rooms in Trinity where once 
lived the author of the " Apologia." It is these 
poetic associations of Cardinal Newman that 
abound In Oxford. In the church of St. Mary 
the Virgin I think of the picture that Matthew 
Arnold has drawn for us: "Who could resist 
the charm of that apparition, gliding in the dim 
afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, 
rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most en- 
trancing of voices, breaking the silence with 
words and thoughts which were a religious music 
— subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him 
saying: * After the fever of life, after weari- 
nesses and sicknesses, fightings and despairings, 
languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeed- 
ing; after all the changes and chances of this 
troubled, unhealthy state, at length comes death, 

102 



Oxford' s Walks and Gardens 

at length the white throne of God, at length the 
beautiful vision.' " 

But opposite Oriel is an entrance to Christ 
Church College, and now we will not go linger- 
ingly, because I wish to take you to an humble 
college, Pembroke. The magnificent church 
might taunt Pembroke upon its few and humble 
associations, but cannot Pembroke return? *' And 
is not Johnson ours, himself a host?" That 
stanch old hero, Samuel Johnson, " whose foi- 
bles we care more for than most great men's vir- 
tues," was an undergraduate here, and, too, an 
undergraduate who did not gracefully conform 
to the rules of his college. He did not consider 
his tutor of sufficiently good attainments, so he 
cut the lecture after the first morning. To the 
civil inquiry of his tutor as to the cause of his 
absence, he replied: "Sliding on the ice." He 
was fined twopence. *' You have sconced me 
tuppence for a lecture not worth a penny." 

Friend Taylor was at Christ Church opposite. 
Johnson in going to get Taylor's notes second- 
hand saw that his ragged shoes were noticed 
by Christ Church men and went no more. Ma- 
caulay says: "He was driven from the quad- 
rangles of Christ Church by the sneering looks 

^03 



A Book of Hours 

which the members of that aristocratical society 
cast at the holes in his boots. ..." 

IVe always liked that amusing, forceful pas- 
sage of Carlyle's on the story of Johnson's 
boots, in which he calls him a " picturesque, 
ragged servitor." Dr. Birkbeck Hill, the best 
Johnson historian to-day, tells us that he was 
not a servitor. 

Johnson always visited his college when he 
came to Oxford. " The church where Johnson 
worshiped in the era of Voltaire is a venerable 
place." We can see at Oxford the desk where 
Johnson wrote his dictionary, his manuscript 
prayers and meditations, and his teapot. To my 
Johnsonian eye the teapot had great interest, an 
immense blue and white one. His prowess as a 
tea drinker is well known. On one occasion he 
drank five-and-twenty cups, and he described 
himself as a " hardened and shameless tea 
drinker — ^who with tea amuses the evenings, 
with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea 
welcomes the mornings." 

On leaving Pembroke, with its association 

with Johnson, the last literary king, I should 

take you for a peep at Exeter College, because 

of two of its men, the most antithetical to John- 

104. 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

son, but men who have contributed very much 
to the art of England and the world, William 
Morris and Burne-Jones. The building where 
they had their rooms has been destroyed, but 
in the chapel of Exeter College is a tapestry 
designed by Burne-Jones and executed by Mor- 
ris. Burne-Jones (from King Edward's School 
at Birmingham) and William Morris (from 
Marlborough School) took their examinations 
side by side for Exeter College, and at once be- 
came great friends, but none of the Exeter men 
were in their '* set," which was made up almost 
wholly of Pembroke men who had been Burne- 
Jones's schoolfellows. They formed a " set " of 
their own, and as their acquaintance ripened they 
were not without thought of giving a perma- 
nence to their union by forming themselves into 
a monastic brotherhood, as nearly all of them 
had at that time the thought of reading for 
Holy Orders. A book had come out which in- 
fluenced them very much, and by which they 
were guiding their lives — " The Heir of Red- 
clyffe." Morris, the wealthiest one of the group, 
had most shaped his life to conform to the 
model of the High Church hero, and he medi- 
tated using his fortune to found a monastery. 



A Book of Hours 

But they talked of poetry. Whatever may be the 
custom of undergraduates to-day, and they say 
that very little literature is talked of now, fifty 
years ago, when William Morris and Burne- 
Jones were at Oxford, they and their friends 
talked of Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, Milton — 
talked and read them. 

Always, since I first heard of the incident 
some years ago, have I had a fond memory for 
the evening when two of the friends, Dixon and 
Price, of Pembroke, went to Burne-Jones's 
room, where they found Morris, and Burne- 
Jones exclaimed wildly, as they entered the 
room, '' He's a big poet ! " " Who is? " " Why, 
Topsy " — the name for Morris among his inti- 
mate friends all his life, so dubbed from his 
mass of dark, curly hair. 

But a delicious bit that I cannot refrain from 
telling you we learn from one of Burne-Jones's 
letters, written on the first of May, 1853. Then, 
as now, the time-honored custom of first of May 
was observed, and an evening's supplementary 
confusion seems to have been in order in the time 
of Morris and Burne- Jones, who writes on May 
day: ** Ten o'clock, evening. I have just been 
pouring basins of water on the crowd below 
106 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

from Dixon^s garret — such fun, by Jove ! *' and 
then goes on : " I have set my heart on founding 
a Brotherhood. Learn * Sir Galahad ' by heart. 
He is to be the patron of our Order.'* Later he 
writes : *' We must enlist you in this Crusade and 
Holy Warfare against the Age." This picture 
of the social regenerator, the modern Sir Gala^* 
had, pouring basins of water on the heads of the; 
passers-by, shows him to have some features ini 
common with other undergraduates. 

It is possible I might give you a peep at the 
rooms that were occupied by Walter Pater — but 
in this hasty run from college to college I have 
done what I so decidedly reprehend in others. 
Visitors often try to see Oxford in a few hours, 
but when one remembers there are more than 
twenty colleges as well as numberless other fea- 
tures of interest, it is easy to understand that a 
brief tarry means, necessarily, a very superficial 
glance. I had an amusing example of the way 
Oxford may be seen. One morning a cycling 
party of three came down the Broad, a gentle- 
man and two ladies. The gentleman had been 
smoking, but, removing his pipe, holding the 
bowl in hand and using stem for pointer, he 
said: "That's the Sheldonian." "The what?" 



A Book of Hours 

one of his companions called back. " The Shel- 
donian," he again told them, and they all cycled 
on, without vouchsafing a second glance at *' The 
Sheldonian." It is this theater, founded by 
Archbishop Sheldon, and designed by Chris- 
topher Wren, in which is held yearly the Com- 
memoration of Founders and Benefactors, here 
the honorary degree of D.C.L. is conferred on 
eminent men whom the university wishes to dis- 
tinguish. The area is arranged for graduates 
and strangers — a ladies' gallery, while here are 
donors', and there the undergraduates' gallery. 
The undergraduate is an animal very much given 
to chaff, and pays no respect to persons — to Dr. 
Holmes: " Did you come in a one-hoss shay? " 
To Tennyson : " Did your mother call you 
early? " And to a distinguished don, who was 
delivering a long Latin eulogy on some departed 
dignitary: " That will do very well. Now, sir, 
construe, please." 

But the outward appearance of the Oxford 
colleges gives no suggestion, or at the most, 
meager suggestion, of the delights there are 
within. In this way Cambridge differs markedly 
from the sister university. So many of the Cam- 
bridge charms are open to every eye, but Mag- 
io8 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

dalen College, as it abuts on the street, gives no 
hint whatever of the wealth within of chapel, 
cloister, park, garden. A dean of New College, 
which, by the way, was new In 1379, says: " Our 
forefathers built in a different spirit from our- 
selves. They contrived a lowly portal, reserving 
the best attractions for the interior, and well did 
they know how to charm the soul that had first 
entered by the gate of humility.'* 

The college architecture is quadrangular. 
England has maintained the example set for her 
by that eminent ecclesiastic and architect, Wil- 
liam, of Wyckham, the founder of New Col- 
lege, and entering the portal, one passes through 
successive quadrangles, each vying with the 
other In charm. 

Let us enter one of these portals, although in 
this instance It is not a lowly portal; it Is the 
" Faire Gate *' of Christ Church. The lower 
towers are of the time of the founder. Cardinal 
Wolsey; the upper, Tom Tower, was added in 
the next century by Wren. The name was origi- 
nally Cardinal College. Upon the fall of Wol- 
sey, Henry VIII went on with the work, and 
gave his own name to the foundation ; then later 
it took the name Christ Church College. The 

Jog 



A Book of Hours 

quadrangle Into which we first come Is magnifi- 
cent In size, and is known by the undignified 
appellation of Tom Quad. The entire scheme 
of this college was on a truly magnificent scale, 
and it is one of the finest, perhaps in many re- 
spects It is the finest, academic foundation In Eu- 
rope. Crossing the quadrangle, we come to the 
stairway, which leads to the dining hall, a beau- 
tiful entrance to a mediaeval hall of great 
beauty. Its only rival being Westminster Hall in 
London. We must linger for a little to notice 
the fan vaulting of the roof. Here In the hall 
are portraits of the famous men associated with 
the college, portraits from the brushes of Hol- 
bein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, all the painters that 
have wrought in England since the establishment 
of the college. Cardinal Wolsey's portrait has 
not the place of honor over the dais; It Is rele- 
gated to one side, while Henry VIII looks from 
the central position. It would weary you were I 
to tell over the names of the sons of Christ 
Church. It is considered the most aristocratic of 
Oxford colleges. It was here that King Edward 
VII was In residence during the short time he 
was at Oxford. It is notable, too, for the states- 
men It reckons in Its numbers. Three succes- 

IIO 



Oxford^ s Walks and Gardens 

sive premiers — Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, 
Lord Rosebery — were Christ Church men. 

It will Illustrate the varying Interests of this 
hall if I tell you a very simple experience of a 
morning visit. The custodian of the hall Is an 
old man, naturally full of pride In the rich asso- 
ciations of the place as well as in its material 
richness. We fraternized pleasantly, and one 
morning I stood on the edge of a group to which 
he was pointing out some of the Interesting por- 
traits. *' That is Lewis Carroll,'* he said very 
tenderly, and as It met with no response I said, 
merely because I did not like to see the old man's 
loving enthusiasm wasted: *' 'Alice in Wonder- 
land'?" ''Yes, 'Alice in Wonderland,'" he 
said. Of course, Lewis Carroll, who lived for 
years and years at Christ Church, was a famil- 
iar and dear figure to him. One young lady de- 
tached herself from the group and said: " Could 
you, by any chance, tell me at which one of these 
tables Charles Wesley sat?" Now I could not 
by any chance tell, nor had I ever even specu- 
lated as to the location at table of the great 
Methodist leader, but her question interested me 
because it showed what diverse Interests may 
bring one a pilgrim to this hall. It may be of 

/// 



A Book of Hours 

interest to you If I remind you newly that both 
John and Charles Wesley were of this college. 

The cathedral of Oxford is the chapel of 
Christ Church College, a condition that some- 
times leads to complications in the etiquette of 
precedence ; but while one pays many visits here, 
and grows very much to love this oddly-placed 
cathedral In the heart of the college buildings, 
and while its early history is in the fascinatingly 
remote Saxon times, and Its founder Is a Saxon 
saint of the eighth century, I cannot give any 
further time to this quarter of Oxford, because 
other places call. 

New College Is aboundingly attractive. The 
entrance Is of the lowly portal order, but the 
ages have poetized this — If you will permit that 
use of the word — so that this is to me one of the 
most delightful nooks in the altogether charm- 
ing city. The chapel, with its window designed 
by Reynolds, the cloisters and bell tower, the 
gardens, are as familiar to me as may be, and 
the gardens are most satisfactory, particularly in 
early summer, when the great spikes of the 
chestnut show against the old wall — particularly 
in later summer, when the foliage is dense, and 
the ** adoring vines " make green the tower and 

112 



Oxford* s Walks and Gardens 

parapets. But I must not exhaust epithet and 
praise on New College Gardens, because I shall 
like to have you share with me the delight I have 
in St. John's Garden, and I know just the sea- 
son of the year, the hour of the day, that I should 
wish for your first visit to this spot. It shall not 
be in early summer, although there would then 
be flowers without number — the chestnut, the 
laburnum, the hawthorn — the flowers that are 
beautiful when the year is young; in May, the 
walls lack the dense infolding that I love, though 
there is the purple of the wistaria, the white of 
the clematis, and the suggestion that spring blos- 
soms are trying to gladden this old wall, and 
give it a springtime air, but I like it better when 
summer is advanced, and the maturer vines have 
a hint now and again in their richness that sum- 
mer is at its height — so here let us come some 
rather late summer day, not when the sun is 
lingering low adown in the red west, but " in 
the perfect middle of a splendid afternoon''; 
even then there is an affluence of time, because 
the English afternoons are so much longer than 
ours, the shadows are long on the velvety turf, 
there will be no sound harsher than the chime or 
a bird note. It realizes a notion of an earthly 



A Book of Hours 

paradise, and, if my favorite lines are also yours, 
you will say so heartfeltly, I am sure: 

0/z, the old wall here! How I could pass 

Life in a long midsummer day, 
My feet confined to a plot of grass, 

My eyes from a wall not once away! 
And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe 

Low wall I watch, with a wreath of green. 

This wall is the library front, founded by 
Archbishop Laud, designed by Inlgo Jones. 
There are In this library, if you care to go within, 
some rather grewsome relics of Laud — the cap 
In which he was beheaded, the staff which sup- 
ported him to the scaffold, his episcopal crosier. 
There Is a legend that Laud walks the room; a 
certain grave historian tells us there Is no foun- 
dation in that legend — disappointing to me. 
When Laud was Chancellor of the University 
he entertained the king and queen, and entire 
court, here at St. John. There is in this library 
a portrait of Charles I, having the book of 
Psalms written on the lines of his face and the 
hairs of his head. When Charles II was at Ox- 
ford he begged this picture, and offered to give 
them anything they asked in return. They reluc- 
11^ 



i 



Oxford' s Walks and Gardens 

tantly yielded. *' And now what would you 
like." *' The picture back again, please, your 
Majesty," and Charles restored the portrait — 
so the story goes. 

But Magdalen College shares with St. John 
the admiration given to pleasant places. The 
water walks of Magdalen are shaded by ancient 
trees, and border on the Cherwell that meanders 
with lazy motion. The excess of beauty of St. 
John and Magdalen has not escaped the critic, 
Mr. Andrew Lang, who Is neither of St. John 
nor of Magdalen, but of Merton College. He 
says : " It Is easy to understand that men find it 
a weary task to read In sight of the beauty of 
the groves of Magdalen and the gardens of St. 
John. When Kubla Khan ' a stately pleasure 
dome decreed,* he did not mean to settle stu- 
dents there, and to ask them for metaphysical 
essays and for Greek and Latin prose composi- 
tions." Kubla Khan, Mr. Lang thinks, would 
have found a palace to his desire in the gardens 
of St. John or the groves of Magdalen, " but 
here," he adds, " is scarcely the training-ground 
of first-class men." 

But It is quite time that we stroll out from 
Oxford to one, at least, of the many-storied 



A Book of Hours 

places in the vicinity. One of the most romantic 
pages of English history is filled with the story 
of Rosamond de Clifford, " that Rosamond 
whom men call fair." In some way or another, 
we learn the story of the far-away times of 
Henry II, while we are yet quite unlearned in 
the Hanoverian period, and not wholly familiar 
with the ups and downs of the Victorian age. 
Rosamond de Clifford was a reality of the 
twelfth century, but tradition has spun such a 
veil of romance about her that It is not always 
easy to believe that Rosamond actually lived, 
even In the far-away time. Her royal lover, 
Henry II, built her bower at Woodstock, which 
Is but a few miles from Oxford. The entrance 
to the bower was so labyrinthine that to traverse 
it was impossible to the uninitiated save by 
means of a clue; a green silk thread Is said to 
have been the means which took Queen Eleanor 
to the hiding place of the beauty. According to 
tradition, the queen was momentarily enthralled 
by Rosamond^s wondrous charm, but she quick- 
ly recovered her self-possession, and gave her 
the choice of dagger or poison bowl which she 
bore in either hand, notwithstanding the diffi- 
culties that beset her Ingress. Tennyson in 
Ii6 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

his " Becket '' has lavished description on this 
bower of Rosamond. 

HENRY. / hade them clear 

A royal pleasaiince for thee in the 

wood, 
Not leave these country-fold at 
court. 

ROSAMOND. / brought them 

In from the wood and set them 

here. 
I love them 
More than the garden flowers , that 

seem at most 
Sweet guests or foreign cousins, not 

half speaking 
The language of the land. 

* * s|e 

HENRY. Yet these tree towers. 

Their long bird-echoing minster 

aisles — the voice 
Of the perpetual brook, these gold- 
en slopes. 
Of Solomon, spanning flowers — 
that was your saying. 
All pleased you so at first. 

One drinks from fair Rosamond's well, and 
I have mentioned her to give interest to the 
first short walk; we may take Godstow Nun- 

117 



A Book of Hours 

nery, or its ruins; it is perhaps two miles from 
Oxford; for the most part the walk is along the 
Thames, by a shaded path; on one side is the 
river with boats and canoes, beyond the river 
are broad meadows, where hundreds of horses 
and cattle graze. Though one be alone, she is 
never alone, the gay parties along the stream af- 
fording constant company. The boatmen are 
not all in motion, some lie in boats — 

Moored to the hanks mid wide grass meadows 

which the sunshine fills, 
And watch the warm, green, muffled Cumnor 

Hills, 

After " no more than two miles' walk '* we 
come to the ruins of Godstow Nunnery. 'Twas 
at the nunnery that Rosamond was educated, 
here she fled for protection when she was not 
poisoned by Queen Eleanor. She died naturally, 
but it is supposed that a chalice, or some such 
figure on her tomb, gave rise to the tale of poi- 
son. Several times during her residence at Wood- 
stock she visited Godstow, and, it is said, she 
was lectured by the nuns. 

A fifteenth-century balladist describes thus the 
twelfth-century beauty : 
Ii8 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

Her crisped locks like threads of gold 

Appeared to all men^s sight , 
Her sparkling eyes, like Orient pearls, 

Did cast a heavenly light. 

To return to Oxford, one of the glories of 
many-gloried Oxford is Magdalen College, with 
its majestic tower, from the top of which the 
May morn is greeted with the Latin hymn, its 
cloisters, chapel, water walks. As I walked, 
time and again where the Cherwell goes " mean- 
dering with a lazy motion," I grew accustomed 
to a presence which I could not dissociate from 
Magdalen, although he had more to do with 
Christ Church College. Cardinal Wolsey, in his 
robes of office and dignity, came often before my 
eyes. To Wolsey has been attributed the build- 
ing of the tower here at Magdalen, but if he 
had any connection with it, it was the prosaic, 
although necessary one, of paying the bills when 
he was bursar to the college. 

The great cardinal and chancellor was in- 
terested in the new learning which was agitating 
all Europe, and without doubt, desirous of mak- 
ing a monument to his greatness, founded the 
college, now Christ Church College, calling it 
Cardinal College. Contemporaneously with his 

Jig 



A Book of Hours 

founding the college, he established a school at 
Ipswich for feeding the college; that died with 
his power. Cardinal Wolsey had a faithful fol- 
lower, George Cavendish, by name, who at- 
tended him to his death, and afterward led a 
life of retirement, meditating on the vanity of 
human ambition as exemplified in Wolsey's life. 
After a time he wrote a life of Wolsey, but 
then people were not ready for a life of the car- 
dinal; "men were busy undoing his work." — 
" Not till the days of Mary did Cavendish 
gather together his notes. Wolsey had become 
to him a type of the vanity of human endeavor, 
and points the morals of the superiority of a 
quiet life with God over the manifold activities 
of aspiring ambition." The work remained in 
manuscript until the ntyit century. There were 
several copies in manuscript; one is now in the 
British Museum which you may see ; " one copy 
must have fallen into the hands of Shakespeare, 
who condensed,; with his usual quickness of per- 
ception, what the public could understand of it 
in the play of Henry VIII. It says much for 
Wolsey, that he chose as his personal attendant 
a man of the sweet, sensitive, retiring type of 
George Cavendish, though it was not till after 

120 



Oxford* s Walks and Gardens 

his fall from power that he learned the value 
of such a friend." 

As I paced the water walks at Magdalen, I 
often thought of Cardinal Wolsey's career, 
often the play of Henry VIII was In my hand, 
and it is not strange that the scene became the 
stage in my imagination for the play. Many 
times the words with which we are so familiar 
sounded In my ears. I used to see the scene 
wherein Cardinal Wolsey, deprived of his seal, 
the haughty lords leave him — 

5o fare you well, my little good lord cardinal. 

And he: 

So farewell to the little good you hear me. 
Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness! 

* * * 

Cromwell, Cromwell, 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 

1 served my king, He would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

The repudiated Queen Katherlne looked 
upon Wolsey as the cause of her sorrow, and 
after the cardlnaFs death, we have, from Cav- 
endish's note, with Katherlne and her gentlemen 
usher, Griffith, the remarkable portrait which 

121 



A Book of Hours 

gives the summing up of Wolsey's character 
that I wish to present to you, the blending of 
good and bad, the mingling of faults and vir- 
tues which posterity accepts, although his con- 
temporaries did not take this charitable view; 
and, further, it is a tribute to his work at Christ 
Church. The queen enters assisted by gentle- 
man usher and waiting woman. 

KATHERINE. D'ldst thou fiot tell me, Griffith, 
as thou ledst me, 
That the great child of honor, 
Cardinal Wolsey, was dead? 
* * * 

Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how 

he died: 
If well, he stepped before me, 

happily. 
For my example. 

GENTLEMAN USHER. Well, the voice goes, 
madame: 

Then follows the account condensed from 
Cavendish : 

He was never. 
But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: 

His promises were as he then was, mighty; 
But his performance, as he now is, nothing, 

122 



Oxford' s Walks and Gardens 

On the diametrically opposite side of Oxford 
are Worcester College Gardens. These gardens 
have a lake, and as one sits on the shore of this 
lake, like Sir Bedevere, " revolving many mem- 
ories," Amy Robsart, the Ill-starred heroine of 
" Kenllworth," may be the subject of her rev- 
eries. 

Before the foundation of Worcester College, 
an earlier college, Gloucester Hall, stood on the 
site. When Amy Robsart was murdered at 
Cumnor Hall, but four miles away, her body 
was brought to Gloucester Hall, and lay In state. 
I think I am right In telling you that Robert 
Dudley, her husband, was Chancellor of Glou- 
cester Hall at this time. Her body lay In state 
in the hall, the hall was hung In mourning. The 
gentlewomen did watch, the mourners did dine. 
She was burled in the Church of St. Mary the 
Virgin. It is said that the agitated clergymen 
more than once in the course of the sermon said 
murdered Instead of slain, 

Cumnor Hall, where Amy lived, stood in the 
field adjoining the church. Its psychic sense is 
poignant, being one of the most romantically 
mysterious of castles because of the long-suffer- 
ing vigil kept by a solitary lady. An eighteenth 
century ballad says: ^^^ 



A Book of Hours 

The village maids with fearful glance, 
Avoid the ancient moss-grown wall; 

Nor ever lead the merry dance 
Among the groves of Cum nor Hall. 

Full many a traveler oft hath sighed 
And pensive wept the countess^ fall, 

As wandering onward they've espied 
The haunted spires of Cumnor Hall. 

Now the pensive traveler would like to weep 
the countess's fall at sight of the towers, but 
there are no towers; every vestige of them is 
gone, but the memory of Amy remains. Not 
very long ago, an old man lived in Cumnor who 
remembered that when he and his boy friends 
fished in the ponds near by, a general scamper- 
ing could be brought about by some one's call- 
ing out, ** Dame Dudley is coming, Dame Dud- 
ley is coming! '' 

Now that I have brought you four miles from 
Oxford to Cumnor Hall, I will take you 
through the fields, and we will cross the strip- 
ling Thames at Bablock-hythe. How willingly 
would I travel weary miles simply to cross the 
Thames at Bablock-hythe I Call the ferryman 
and he will take us over, and then it is only a 
couple of miles or so farther to Stanton Har- 
^24 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

court, where, In the chamber of the tower, Pope 
translated the " Iliad.'* Perhaps we will climb 
the stair — the stair that makes us think of our 
Virgil only to invert the quotation. The Man- 
tuan poet tells us the descent to Avernus is easy, 
but to retrace our steps and gain the upper air, 
there is the toil, the difficulty, but as one climbs 
the steep narrow stairs, with nothing but the 
blank slippery wall for hand support, she thinks 
the ascent is difficult, but to retrace one's steps 
in descent will be more difficult still — and then 
there is a heretical minute when physical dis- 
comfort is in excess of pilgrim zeal, when one 
wonders whether this sort of thing pays. But 
if one has had Pope, Gay, Lady Mary Worthey 
Montague, and others of that set for her famil- 
iar friends, she quickly forgets the discomfort, 
in her pleasure at seeing the places associated 
with them. 

One of the most famous letters in literary his- 
tory Is connected with this place. I believe the 
fact is that Gay wrote the letter to Fortescue, 
but Pope admired it sufficiently to copy it, elab- 
orate it, and send it off to Lady Mary. After 
their quarrel, he disclaimed the letter. It tells 
the story of those lovers killed by lightning who 



A Book of Hours 

are buried In the churchyard here at Stanton 
Harcourt, and we go to look at the tablet on 
the side of the church with the poetical tribute 
by Pope. It was of this that Lady Mary cyni- 
cally wrote: 

Now they are happy in their doortiy 
For Pope has writ upon the tomb. 

We will go home by Eynsham, and will have 
made a fifteen-mile round. Perhaps I should 
not dare tell you how far the round is before we 
started out. 

Before I leave Worcester College Gardens 
altogether, I wish to say that if by day one's 
memories there revert to Amy Robsart and her 
melancholy fortunes, at evening the memories 
awakened may be vastly different. Here during 
commemoration week are always enacted some 
pastoral plays. The gardens are lighted with 
fairy lamps and lanterns, the stage is set under 
a huge, widely spreading beech tree, near which 
a flowering elder bush displays its wealth of 
white. Sometimes, it's the Merry Wives and 
Falstaff that come under the Greenwood Tree 
here, or Julia may seek her recreant lord. Na- 
ture has a tricksy sense of the humorous. Never 
126 



Oxford' s Walks and Gardens 

did she display it more aptly than one evening 
last summer. The " Two Gentlemen of Vero- 
na " had taken possession of the magically 
lighted garden, and Proteus had just begun his 
soliloquy : 

Oy how this spring of love resemhleth 
The uncertain glory of an April day, 

JVhich now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
And by and by a cloud takes all away! 

When plash came down an English shower, and 
elevated umbrellas took all glory and romance 
away for a little while. 

I should like you to peep Into Wadham Gar- 
dens with me. My friends sometimes protest 
here, and say, " We don't care anything about 
that seventeenth-century mystery, John Ingle- 
sant, that you say belongs In these gardens," but 
let me tell you one word of him. When Charles 
I was driven from London by that obstreperous 
Parliament, he took up his quarters, as every 
one knows, in the loyal city of Oxford. Here 
he held court, here the loyalist Parliament met. 
Gay dames and gallants made very merry in 
the beautiful city, and seemed quite oblivious of 
the fate impending for the king and kingdom. 

I2Y 



A Book of Hours 

A very good picture of Oxford at this time is 
in the early chapters of " John Inglesant." It 
would be difficult to define the hero, a compound 
of mystic, courtier, Jesuit, but his quarters were 
at Wadham, and after the exacting duties of his 
office in the court, I think of him returning to 
the cedar walk here at Wadham, where even in 
his day, three centuries ago, the trees were an- 
cient, and here in the quiet retirement forgetting 
the turmoils of the court. 

Perhaps you know the beautiful old quad- 
rangle at Balliol, and the garden with its stately 
trees. I never, I think, enter the precincts of 
Balliol without recalling the friendship of two 
Balliol men which is immortalized in the verse 
of one of them. Matthew Arnold and Arthur 
Hugh Clough, a poet too, were Oxford men, 
lovers of the country about Oxford. After 
Clough's death in Florence, Matthew Arnold 
commemorated their friendship in the most 
beautiful verse, and enshrined in the poems the 
delightful scenes about Oxford. Had I gone to 
Oxford without Matthew Arnold's " Scholar 
Gypsy" and "Thyrsis " for company, my pleas- 
ure had been less, I know. Lines from those 
poems were in my heart and on my tongue: 
128 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

Come, let me read the oft-read tale again; 

The story of the Oxford scholar poor. 
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, 

Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, 
One summer morn forsook his friends, 

And went to learn the gypsy-lore. 
And roamed the world with that wild brother- 
hood, 

And came as most men deemed to little good. 
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 

But once, years after, in the country lanes. 

Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew. 
Met him, and of his way of life inquired. 

Whereat he answered that the gypsy-crew. 
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired 

The workings of men's brains, 
And they can bind them to what thoughts they 
will. 

**And I," he said, ** the secret of their art 
When fully learned will to the world impart. 

But it needs heaven-sent moments for this 

skiiir 

This said, he left them, and returned no more — 
But rumors hung about the countryside, 

That the lost scholar long was seen to stray 
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue- 
tied. 

In hat of antique shape and cloak of gray, 
The same the gypsies wore, 

* * * I2Q 



A Book of Hours 

For most, I know, thou lov^st retired ground! 

Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, 
Returning home on summer-nights have met 

Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock- 
hithe, 
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 

As the poinfs rope chops round; 
And leaning backward in a pensive dream. 

And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers. 
Plucked in shy fields and distant JVychwood 
bowers. 

And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 

And this from Thyrsis : 

That single elm tree bright against the west — 

/ miss it! it is gone? 
We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, 

Our friend, the Gypsy Scholar, was not dead; 
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss 
Of quiet! — Look, adown the dusk hillside, 

A troop of Oxford hunters going home, 
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride! 

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they 
come. 

I cannot take time for a leisurely walk over 
Shotover Hill, beloved of Shelley, but I should 
entreat you to take the walk, a broad grassy 
130 



Oxford's Walks and Gardens 

plateau, edged with trees and hedges. When 
the world is white with May, there is a beauti- 
ful frame for the plateau. 

The first time I was on Shotover Plain, I was 
on my way to Forest Hill. I went miles out of 
my way, so perhaps you would not care to ac- 
company me. I began to despair. I thought I 
should have to return, failing in my quest, but 
at last as I was giving way to my feeling that 
the pale mark of failure must be set on me, I 
caught sight of a village straggling up a tree- 
lined street. My heart told me that it was the 
place — but why my desire to see Forest Hill at 
all? Commentators are not agreed as to the 
place that gave Milton his picture for *' L'Al- 
legro " and "II Penseroso''; the most are for 
Horton, some for Forest Hill, but no one can 
deny that he met, wooed, and married Mary 
Powell here. I expect that those poems of Mil- 
ton, '' II Penseroso" and " UAIlegro,'^ gave me 
some of my first and greatest anticipatory pleas- 
ures in English rural life and songs. Conse- 
quently I was most ready to believe Forest Hill 
suggested the poems, if I found it satisfactory 
to me, and it was ideal. Scarcely had I discov- 
ered the sweet village before I also saw. 



A Book of Hours 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 

From betwixt two aged oaks, 
Where Cory don and Thyrsis met. 

Sometimes my remarks about the Cherwell, 
its beauty and the pleasure it gives the Oxford- 
ians, seem to have been taken rather in the na- 
ture of a glove thrown down — ^whlch is far from 
my intention — but in my passage from one New 
England town to another, I have had queries 
like this discharged at me : " Do you know the 
Sudbury well?" "Very little." "The first 
day this spring that's suitable for boating, you 
are to spend all day with us on the Sudbury. 
Fm sure youUl say it's as beautiful as any Eng- 
lish river you ever saw." And here has my lis- 
tener forgotten the most forceful statement that 
I bring to my work — it is not the intrinsic 
beauty alone, it is the association which adds 
a glamour indescribable to Oxford's charms. 

My prints will suggest little to you of the 
outward beauty, my tongue is feeble to express 
to you the poetry of association, so until you 
have seen " the sweet city with her dreaming 
spires " you can not picture to yourself its de- 



lights. 



^32 



FROM LOUGH NEAGH TO 
LOUGH FOTLE 



IT might be assumed that anyone knows 
where Lough Neagh is, but false postu- 
late. It is in the heart of Ulster — border- 
ing on ^Yt counties, Tyrone, Dury, Antrim, 
Down, Armagh, and Is the largest lake In the 
United Kingdom. The Irish are not perfectly 
acquainted with It. '* Is the water salt?" 
" Nay, man alive, dinna ye ken, that an Interior 
lake of this size were It salt would be the world's 
wonder?" Its surface Is little diversified, hav- 
ing only one island of any size, Ram Island, 
and its shores are not picturesque. 

But whether one may locate the lake, every- 
one knows its origin, from a spring with mirac- 
ulous power of overflowing If the stone cover 
were not properly replaced. A woman that had 
heard her crying child and ran to it, lifted the 
cover of the spring to look beneath and forgot 
to put it back, hence the Inundated country, sub- 
merged towns, and towers for twenty miles, 

^33 



A Book of Hours 

and where the places were, Lough Neagh Is! 
This Is the commonest version, known by every- 
one and credited by many. 

Moore's lines have fixed the legend Ineradl- 
cably. 

On hough Neagh* s hanks as the fisherman strays 
When the clear soft eve*s declining^ 

He sees the round towers of other days 
In the wave beneath him shining. 

This is the meager legend that accounts for 
Lough Neagh. Few enough of the northern 
peasants have heard an elaboration of the story 
which I am going to give you. 

There is in Dublin, In the possession of the 
Royal Irish Academy, a book called the " Book 
of the Dun Cow." It is the oldest manuscript 
book of miscellaneous literature of Ireland. It 
was transcribed from older books by a learned 
scribe in 1106. It is mutilated, but one hundred 
and thirty-four large vellum pages now remain, 
of poetry, stories, biographies — all kinds of lit- 
erature. It Is called the book of the Dun Cow 
from the parchment on which it was transcribed. 
Some notion of the value of this book may be 
got from a little knowledge of the history of 

134 



From hough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

Ireland. When a conqueror dictated his terms 
of peace, and the concessions that the van- 
quished were to make, an item of importance 
besides lands and stores was — the ** Book of 
the Dun Cow." When arms were resumed, one 
of the objects to gain was this same book of the 
Dun Cow. The book Is not beautiful to look 
at, as are the '* Book of Kells," the *' Book of 
Darrow," the " Book of Armagh," and others of 
the transcendently beautiful illuminated manu- 
scripts over which the monks toiled, but know- 
ing the history of the Dun Cow, it has a roman- 
tic interest for me, a quality of interest that 
the more artistic do not possess. 

When I returned to my home in North Ire- 
land, my host, after giving me the never-want- 
ing " Welcome home," added, " Did you see 
the book of the Dun Cow? " — a book in which 
he shared my interest. 

Among the stories In this famous book Is 
one that tells of Lough Neagh and its origin. It 
should be told In something other than this 
day's vernacular. 

Long, long years ago, centuries ago, a certain 
king of Munster had a son, Ecca by name, who 
became alienated from his father. The estrange- 

135 



A Book of Hours 

ment grew, so that the son, with a following, 
left the country to found a new kingdom. His 
men had with them horses and many posses- 
sions. One night, when they had encamped in a 
Strange country, the ruler of the country ordered 
their immediate withdrawal, and upon their 
failing to go, he killed all their horses, and said, 
** To-night we have slain the beasts, to-morrow, 
if ye tarry, 'twill be the men." " But how can 
we go on,*' asked Ecca, " when we have no 
horses to carry our burdens? " " I will provide 
means," said the chief, and there appeared one 
gigantic horse able to carry all their belongings. 
He warned Ecca that the horse must be kept 
continually in motion, that if it were permitted 
to stop for a moment a very dire disaster would 
befall the expedition. The company went on 
until it came to the Plain of the Gray Copse, 
which they selected for their new home. In the 
distribution of goods, the immense horse stood 
still. They were forgetful of the warning, and 
a spring started from the ground. Ecca, re- 
membering then that he had been cautioned 
about results, knew that the spring must be 
watched lest it should bring disaster upon his 
new colony. He built a house around the 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

spring, gave it Into the care of a woman, and 
commanded her to let no one draw water except 
they came from the palace. For a long time 
the woman was most vigilant, and no harm 
came to the Plain of the Gray Copse; all was 
prosperous. 

Now Ecca had two daughters, Arin and 
Liban. The husband of Arin had the " fatal 
gift of prophecy," but, like other prophets, his 
words availed naught. He Implored Ecca to 
quit the Plain of the Gray Copse, predicting the 
destruction of all if they remained. 

Come forth, come forth, ye valiant men: build 

boats and build them fast! 
I see the waters surging out, a torrent deep and 

vast; 
I see our chief and all his host overwhelmed be^ 

neath the wave, 
And Arin, too, my best beloved, alas, I cannot 

save. 
But Liban east and west shall swim, 

Long ages on the ocean* s brim 
By mystic shores and islets dim 
And down in the deep sea. 

So Curnan, the son-in-law of Ecca, is repre- 
sented as saying, going up and down the land in 

137 



A Book of Hours 

great distress of mind. And finally his words 
proved true. The spring was left unguarded for 
a moment and the waters came rushing out; all 
things and people were engulfed and destroyed, 
save only Liban, Curnan, and one other. It is 
only with Liban^s fate that we are concerned, 
and here ends the story as far as Lough Neagh, 
but the rest of the story attaches to the country 
immediately about the Lough. 

Liban remained under the water in her cham- 
ber for a year, and her lapdog remained with 
her. One day when she saw the salmon splash- 
ing beneath the water, she wished she were a 
salmon, and straightway she became one, except 
as to her breast and head, which retained Li- 
ban's form, and her lapdog was changed to an 
otter. She swam east, and she swam west, as 
Curnan had predicted. One day, Beoc, from the 
ecclesiastical house, was starting off in his cur- 
ragh on a mission to Pope Gregory, in Rome. 
As he sailed over the water, he heard beautiful, 
entrancing singing; it was Liban, and she said 
to Beoc, " Come to Ollarba near the end of the 
year, with boats and fishing nets to take me 
from the water.'' Ollarba was what is now 
Larne Water, on the Antrim coast. Beoc most 

138 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

composedly sailed on, executed his commission 
in Rome, but on his return to Ireland he told 
the other saints in the monastery, and a goodly 
company came on a day near the end of the year, 
as appointed by Liban. She was caught in the 
net of one Fergus of Meelich, and although 
there was some contention between him and 
Beoc as to the possession of her, it was soon 
amicably settled: she was conveyed in a chariot 
drawn by yoked oxen to sanctuary, and imme- 
diately translated to joys of Paradise. 

Arboe is on the shores of Lough Neagh, in 
county Tyrone, in the region famous for its 
Rapparees, a few centuries ago. 'Twas not far 
away that Rory, the Rapparee, most famous of 
all, terrorized the English invader. 

Full oft have the hills of Tyrone 

With cry of the gallow-glass rang, 
When down on the red ranks of Cromwell 

With hatred and fury they sprang. 

But never in breach or in battle, 

In onset, in foray or raid, 
Oh, ne'er saw the hills of Tyrone 

Such charge as the Rapparees made. 

The abbey ruins and cross of Arboe are out- 
side the village, and because of that, perhaps. 



A Book of Hours 

and perhaps because of the charge the Rappa- 
rees made, the cross was not injured by Crom- 
well. The broken arm Is not the work of time, 
or of Cromwellian soldiers, but of nineteenth- 
century vandalism. 

Then we may look over to Ram's Island in 
Lough Neagh. 

Ifs 'pretty to he in Balinderry, 

Ifs pretty to he in Aghaler, 

Ifs pretty to he in honny Ram^s Island 

Sitting under an ivy tree — 

Och hone, Och hone. 
Oh, that I was in Little Ratn^s Island, 
Oh, that I was with Phelim my diamond. 
He would whistle and I would sing 
Till we would make the whole island ring. 
** I'm going,** he said, *' from Balinderry, 

Out and across the stormy sea, , 

And if in your heart you love me, Mary, i 

Open your arms at last to mej' 
And there in the gloom of the groaning 

mast. 
He kissed me first and he kissed me last. 
*Twas happy to he in Little Ram*s Island, 

But now ifs as sad as sad can he. 
For the ship that sailed with Phelimy Hy- 
land. 

Is sank forever beneath the sea, 

140 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

If 5 pretty to be in Balinderry, 

It's pretty to he in Magharalin. 

' Tis pretty to he in Balinderry 

'Tis pretty to he at the Cash of Toome. 

But a variation in locale and sentiment is the 
Church Island version. Church Island is a beau- 
tiful little island in Lough Beg, an arm of 
Lough Neagh. It was the site of an early re- 
ligious foundation, and the ruins are in a state 
of unusual preservation. 

Oh, it's pretty to he in honny Church Island, 
Nobody there but Phelitn my diamond, 
Phelim would whistle and I would sing 
Until we would make the Church Island 
ring. 

Phelime, Phelime, why did you leave me? 
Sure I could wash, I could bake, I could 

spin, 
Phelime, Phelime, why did you leave mef 
ril tell the priest on you, Phelime, Phil, 

Randalstown was in the region where I was 
led to expect that I might find the song, and 
dodging into shops, buying a few biscuits, I 
inquired, but no one knew it in Randalstown. 
I found it, however, in Cushendall, where I 
found much else, things lovely and of good 
report. 

141 



A Book of Hours 

The ruins of Shane's Castle are on the shores 
of Lough Neagh, and very picturesque they are. 
Shane's Castle was one of my objects in Ireland. 
This domain was for long the seat of that fam- 
ily of O'Neills that ruled Ireland before, the 
coming of St. Patrick. Now the name and in- 
signia of the O'Neills are preserved, but the 
present family are usurpers, Chichesters of Eliz- 
abethan favor, and they have no lineal claim to 
the glories of the historic O'Neills. The flag of 
the O'Neills was flying from the bastion on the 
glorious June day when I visited Shane's Cas- 
tle. The emblem of the O'Neill's is the Red 
Hand. Many hundred years ago, when a vi- 
king invader was nearing Ireland, he prom- 
ised vast possessions to the first man who 
touched land. An O'Neill, the progenitor 
of the great race, cut off his left hand and 
flung it ashore, thus touching land before 
any of his fellow adventurers. This story is 
not the sole property of the O'Neills. Other 
families claim it under somewhat modified 
circumstances, but the fact is that the O'Neills 
have always used the Red Hand for their 
emblem. 

The O'Neills have a banshee, and she was 
142 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

distinctly seen by many in 1816, when the Cas- 
tle was burned, for it is not time, but fire, that 
has made these ruins. The flames lighted up 
Lough Neagh for miles and miles around, the 
people gathered on the heights around to see 
the sight, there were no means for extinguishing 
it, and many saw a figure, white-robed, move 
from window to window wringing her hands, 
the banshee of the house. 

The demesne is the finest in Ireland, except- 
ing the Marquis of Waterford's at Curragh- 
more, but because it is in the North, it is less 
well known. It was very early that I rang the 
bell at the lodge gate — so early that the portress 
was inclined to deny me entrance. She thought 
sinister business and not pleasure must be my 
motive, but I convinced her that I was a harm- 
less tourist and had no business beyond the see- 
ing the estate and Shane's Castle. She became 
hospitable, and upon my telling her that my 
early arrival meant that I had left breakfastless, 
she gave me bread and tea and egg, and we chat- 
ted. The breakfast cost me whatever I pleased 
to give in money, although the portress de- 
murred about accepting anything; but the heavi- 
est payment exacted was the looking at the fam- 

143 



A Book of Hours 

Ily photographs and commenting upon the re- 
semblances and qualities. 

The 0*Neill was justified to lose his hand if 
'twere to gain territory as beautiful as is the 
estate. From the gate I entered to the Castle 
is three long miles, as I was told again and 
again. And anyone that thinks a mile is abso- 
lute is uncertain; there are miles and miles. 
There's the Irish mile, which is much longer, 
longer by more than twelve hundred feet, than 
the English mile. But one did not care for num- 
ber or length of miles when the scene was so 
delightful, the morning so rare. The Main 
winds in and about the place; several bridges 
cross it. Trees of infinite variety and varied 
growth shade the way, the most beautiful ferns 
and rhododendrons border it. Sometimes the 
road skirts Lough Neagh; always it is beautiful. 
The rockery, a natural formation of rock like 
Giant's Causeway, has been made very attrac- 
tive with a most luxurious growth of ferns. One 
may spend what time she will on the way to the 
Castle, there are seats beneath the trees, or in 
the hawthorn hedges. Then the ivy-grown tow- 
ers and fragments of the Castle come in view. 

More than a hundred years ago Mrs. Sid- 
I4i 



From Lough Neagh to hough Foyle 

dons, the great actress, was entertained here, 
and in her diary has left some description of the 
passage of time. The luxury of the establish- 
ment ** almost inspired the recollection of the 
Arabian Nights' entertainment. Six or eight 
carriages with a numerous throng of lords and 
ladies on horseback began the day by making 
excursions around the celestial Paradise, return- 
ing home just in time for dinner. The table was 
served with an elegance and profusion to which 
I have seldom seen anything comparable. Im- 
mense silver flagons held claret. A fine orches- 
tra played during the entire repast, the musi- 
cians being stationed in corridors which led into 
a conservatory, where the guests plucked dessert 
from trees of most exquisite fruits. The foot of 
the conservatory was washed by the waves of 
a superb lake, from which the cool and pleas- 
ant winds came to murmur in concert with the 
harmony from the corridors." At this time of 
which Mrs. Siddons writes, " the beauty, talent, 
and rank of Ireland used to assemble here,** and 
as she lacks " words to describe the beauty and 
splendor of this enchanting place," I may be ex- 
cused if I utterly fall to give you any notion of 
its claims. 

145 



A Book of Hours 

The place to visit Shane's Castle is Randals- 
town, and a few miles beyond Randalstown is 
Antrim, where one finds one of the most perfect 
Round Towers in Ireland. It is ninety-three feet 
high, fifty feet in circumference, and high up in 
it are four slits. North, South, East, West. It 
is so easy to ask for what were these Round 
Towers built? Were it easy to answer, perhaps 
they would not have the interest for me that 
they have, but the mystery of the origin, and 
their defiance of time, together with the beau- 
tiful surroundings of many of them, give a 
magnified interest. It is not exaggeration to say 
volumes have been written upon these Round 
Towers; many ponderous tomes have been de- 
voted to the subject, one proving what the other 
disproves. There are antiquarians confident that 
they were pre-Christian in origin, others that 
they were built by the early Christians, while 
still others defend the theory of their pagan ori- 
gin, but believe they were subsequently adapted 
to Christian uses. 

Briefly, to sum up some of the uses that have 

been ascribed to these Round Towers. Among 

their pagan uses: i. Fire temples. 2. Places 

to proclaim Druidical festivals. 3. Gnomons, 

146 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

or astronomical observatories. 4. That they 
were Buddhist temples. 5. Sepulture. 

Among their Christian uses: i. Anchorite 
towers. 2. Penitential prisons. 3. Belfries. 
4. Keeps, or monastic watch towers, treasure 
houses, beacons. 

Petrle's conclusions are that, first, they were 
intended to serve as belfries; second, as keeps, 
or places of strength In which sacred utensils, 
books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, 
and into which the ecclesiastics to whom they 
belonged could retire for security in cases of 
sudden predatory attack. 

If I must declare for anyone as architect of 
these curious Round Towers, It would be for 
Gobhan Saer. I have no reason except my own 
pleasure in associating this half-mythical archi- 
tect of the sixth century with these mysterious 
structures. I would rather Gobhan Saer had the 
honor than St. Fechin. 

One of Ireland's poets, D. F. McCarthy, 
sings: 

The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously 

they stand, 
By the lakes and rushing rivers, through the 

valleys of our land, 

147 



A Book of Hours 

In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their 

heads sublime, 
These gray old pillar temples — these conquerors 

of Time. 

Two favorites hath Time — the pyramids of Nile, 
And the old mystic temples of our own dear isle. 

And this IS what he tells us of ** The Gobhan 
Saer": 

He stept a man out of the ways of men. 

And no one knew his sept or rank or name, — 
Like a strong stream far issuing from a glen. 

From some source unexplored, the Master 
came; 
Gossips there were, who, wondrous keen of ken, 

Surmised that he should he a child of shame; 
Others declared him of the Druids; then 

Through Patricks labors fallen from power 
and fame. 

He lived apart, wrapt up in many plans; 

He wooed not women, tasted not of wine; 
He shunned the sports and councils of the clans. 

Nor ever knelt at a frequented shrine. 
His orisons were old poetic ranns. 

Which the new O Haves deemed an evil sign; 
To most he seemed one of those pagan Khans, 

Whose mystic vigor knows no cold decline. 

148 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

He was the builder of the wondrous Towers, 

Which f tall and straight and exquisitely round , 
Rise monumental round the isle once ours; 

Index-like, marking spots of holy ground, 
In gloaming glens, in leafy lowland bowers. 

On rivers^ banks, these Cloiteachs old abound; 
Where Art, enraptured, meditates long hours. 

And Science flutters like a bird spellbound, 

ho! whereso^er these pillar-towers aspire. 

Heroes and holy men repose below, — 
The bones of some gleaned from the pagan pyre. 

Others on armor lie, as for a foe: 
It was the mighty Master^ s life desire 

To chronicle his great ancestors so; 
What holier duty, what achievement higher, 

Remains to us, than this he thus doth show? 

Yet he, the builder, died an unknown death: 
His labor done, no man beheld him more; 

*Twas thought his body faded like a breath, 
Or, like a sea mist, floated off Lifers shore. 

His works alone attest his life and lore, — 
They are the only witnesses he hath, 

All else Egyptian darkness covers o^er. 

Men called him Gobhan Saer, and many a tale 
Yet lingers in the byways of the land. 

Of how he cleft the rock, and down the vale 
Led the bright river, childlike, in his hand; 

149 



A Book of Hours 

Of how on giant ships he spread great sail, 
And many marvels else by him first planned: 

But though these legends fade, in Innisfail 
His name and towers for centuries shall stand. 

In the sixth century he lived. If I must as- 
sociate them with some definite builder I like 
it to be this man that " stept a man out of the 
ways of men, and no one knew his sept or rank 
or name." And I like to think that centuries 
before Giotto's campanile was begun this man 
had reared many campanilia, " tall and straight 
and exquisitely round." 

There is the Round Tower Antrim on pri- 
vate estate Streples, Round Tower of Monaster- 
boice, Round Tower of Glendalough. This 
Tower of Glendalough, its divine beauty and 
tradition make a creation Indescribable — ^but 
Glendalough is not in Ulster. 

Near this Round Tower In Antrim is a flat 
Druidical stone which some would have us 
believe was actually used for human sacrifices, 
but I like better to believe that 'twas a witch's 
stone, as It's now described, and a very ener- 
getic witch she was, too, for she jumped from 
the top of the Round Tower and struck knee 
and elbow, making the Indentations — ^whlch 



From Lough Neagh to hough Foyle 

were partly full of innocent rain water when I 
saw it. 

There are many interesting places between 
Antrim and the coast, but so many more on the 
coast that one cannot linger. Carrickfergus is 
interesting because it is identified with Turn's 
Castle and Ossian, the warrior-poet. 

Glenoe, a glen village before one reaches 
Larne, is a delightful little village, but few 
enough tourists will go out of the way to it. 
They will hurry on to Lame for the coast tour, 
and hurry out of Larne for the coast tour, al- 
though Larne has in itself much that's interest- 
ing, and to many that dislike the sea Larne has 
interest because of the short sea passage over to 
Scotland, less than two hours at this point. 

At Larne, or near Larne, was Rathmore at 
Moylinney, the home of Mongan, a person it is 
difficult to disentangle from the network of his- 
tory and fairy lore. 

He was King of Ulster in the seventh cen- 
tury. The annals of Clennacnoise under date 
of A.D. 624 tell us gravely that Mongan, a 
very well-spoken man, and much given to the 
wooing of women, was killed by one Arthur, a 
Welshman, with a stone. 

J5J 



A Book of Hour 

Mongan was in Rathmore of Moylinney in 
his kingship. Every night his poet would recite 
him a story. So great was his lore that this went 
on from Hallowe'en to May day. One day the 
king asked him respecting the death of a certain 
Fenian hero, and the poet said he was slain at 
Duffy in Leinster. Mongan said it was false. 
The poet said he would satirize him with lam- 
poons, his father, and his mother, and his grand- 
mother, and he would sing spells upon their wa- 
ters so that no fish could be caught in their 
river mouths. He would sing spells upon their 
woods so that they would not give fruit, upon 
their plains so that they would be barren of 
produce forever. 

Mongan promised him precious things, doub- 
ling them, tripling them, then one third, one 
half, or his whole land, then his wife unless he 
were redeemed before three days. Thereat the 
w^oman was sorrowful. Mongan told her not to 
be sorrowful. The tear was not taken from her 
cheek. Help would certainly come to them. 

When it came to the third day, and the poet 
would have his bond, Mongan said, " Be not 
sorrowful, woman, I hear even now his feet 
who is coming to our help. I hear his feet in 

^5^ 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

Kerry, then over the great lake of Killarney, 
then on loughs, rivers, bays — ^now in the Larne 
water — " The person came, disproved the say- 
ing of the poet, and all was well. 

Given fair skies, the coach and car drive from 
Larne to the Causeway is a delight unspeak- 
able; the road is fine, a great engineering feat,' 
on one side for the most of the way is the 
Moyle, the name given to the Northern Chan- 
nel between Ireland and Scotland. Its blueness 
in the summer is the essence of cerulean. I never 
saw such blue seas. On the left there is vary- 
ing scenery of cliff, awful in height, and sea- 
washed caves, castles, villages, inns; a very 
modern castle is that built this century by the 
Marchioness of Londonderry, filled with curi- 
osities of her collecting and recently opened 
for a hotel. It's one of the things on the 
Antrim Coast Road for which I don't particu- 
larly care. 

The structure here, white limestone and ba- 
salt resting on thin Jurassic clays, causes contin- 
ual landslips, and there is one village called 
Sliding Village, as it is continually sliding to 
low elevation, where the peasants patiently re- 
establish themselves. 

153 



A Book of Hours 

Red Bay Is interesting for its arch and caves, 
in one of which Old Nanlne dispensed poteen 
for over thirty years, and the cave bears the 
name of Nanine's Cave. Another cave adjacent 
to Nanine's is yet known as Forge Cave; here 
for years a blacksmith wrought at his trade. 
The blacksmith has gone now, and none of the 
caves are inhabited, but a traveler of years ago 
says : " The blacksmith was in perfect keeping 
with the scene. One might have fancied that his 
life had been spent in shoeing horses for brig- 
ands and rapparees. His continual fires kept 
the cave tolerably dry, in which respect *twas 
better than Nannie's, where there was a constant 
deposit of moisture, but a drop of the rale stuff 
made it all safe enough." 

But my favorite village on the Antrim coast 
is Cushendall. For long I had had the strong-^ 
est wish to visit Cushendall; words of its beauty 
had come to me now and again; I knew *twas 
a good hunting ground for my particular game 
of legends and stories. Had Cushendall disap- 
pointed me, 'twould have been a colossal disap- 
pointment, but the little village at the foot of 
the Dall, embowered in roses and fuchsias and 
ferns, fulfilled every promise. Even the inn with 

^54 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

its good situation and hospitable attention had 
not been unduly praised. 

If ever you should visit Cushendall, go to my 
hostelry, the Glens of Antrim, and have a room 
that looks down upon the rose garden. Take 
jaunting-car rides, and be content to stay there 
-^a year. We have one instance of a novelist 
that gratefully dedicates his books, or a book, 
to his tailor, another that makes his dedicatory 
tribute to his doctors, but when I dedicate my 
book it shall be to the Irish landladies, four in 
number, that smoothed the way of a solitary in 
a strange country. The quartet will be made 
up — ril tell you so that you'll recognize the 
dedication — of my Dublin hostess, a pretty 
Quakeress who would have prevented my seeing 
Coquelin if she could, but in every other way 
she furthered my pleasure in Dublin; of Mrs. 
Millar, the proprietress of Glens of Antrim, 
herself a Dublin woman, gracious and so kind 
to the unattended traveler; of Mrs. Hunter 
of Ballycastle — the Antrim Arms — Fll tell you 
later some of her special kindnesses; and last, 
but far from least, dear little Mrs. McMahon 
on the East Wall of Londonderry. If I had a 
mine of sovereigns, I would fill all Mrs. Mc- 

155 



A Book of Hours 

Mahon's rooms, and the dwellers in them would 
eat her grilled salmon, her grilled chop, drink 
her brewing of tea, and bless her and me. If 
you ever find yourself at Port Rush, the most 
fashionable watering place in North Ireland, do 
take the couple of hours by train to London- 
derry, cross the ferry, and at Shipquay Street 
ask to be directed to the East Wall, McMa- 
hon*s Private Hotel. It's near Ferryquay gate, 
the very gate the Prentice Boys shut so uncere- 
moniously In the face of James II. Mrs. Mc- 
Mahon will wish a sponsor, "use my name; *' 
you don't know how many times that's quoted 
from kind Irish gentlemen and ladies that were 
my sponsors, up and down and round the 
country. 

But to return to Cushendall. In the matter 
of scenery, you'll be difficult to please if you 
ask for greater variety than Cushendall offers; 
there is Red Bay, for sea, Cushendall River, 
wood, mountains, and glens. Seven glens are 
in this vicinity, although they are not all easily 
accessible from this point; this Is the glen coun- 
try, before we enter the country known historic- 
ally as the Route. But Glen Airff is one of the 
seven easily reached: a car to the fort, a walk 



From hough Neagh to hough Foyle 

through the glen with its numberless waterfalls 
of all shapes and heights, its hazel and larches 
and ferns, and when one reaches the tea house 
at the mouth of the glen, one's jaunting car will 
have come round by the road, too. 

The Old Church at Layde is very picturesque 
with its mantel of ivy and rose and fuchsia. The 
sea washes its lower edge, the speedwell makes 
a dense blue carpet under many of the horizon- 
tal stones, and here and there is a fine Celtic 
cross. The most noticeable thing is the large 
plane tree growing in a roofless church. Long 
years ago, when it was the custom to carry the 
coffin on poles, a man who had helped bear the 
coffin stuck his pole in the ground to save the 
trouble of carrying it home. It took root and 
grew to this size. Since, the church has been 
roofless; at least one marriage has been solem- 
nized under the tree. 

Go up to Glendun to see the old altar, in the 
cleft root of an oak tree it is builded, its in- 
scription cannot be deciphered. Glendun holds 
tradition of Fin McCool of the third century, 
the seventh king of Ireland, who continued to 
be the great popular hero even to the seventh 
century, and about whom is grouped the Fe- 

J57 



A Book of Hours 

nian cycle of saga. " Warrior better than Fin," 
says an old vellum manuscript in the British 
Museum, " never struck his hand into chiefs, 
Inasmuch as for service he was a soldier, a hos- 
pitaller for hospitality, in heroism a hero, and 
In strength a champion worthy of a king, so 
that ever since, and from that until this. It Is 
with Fin that every such is coordinated." 

Fin McCool lived on one of the mountains 
— " I don't know where Fin lived, but do know 
where his son Is supposed to be buried." "Don't 
say supposed to be," I entreated. " Well, where 
he Is burled. If ye like that better," said the 
obliging carman. But Ossian, the son of Fin 
McCool, Is buried all over Ireland, and all over 
Scotland as well. Robert Burns In one of his 
peregrinations In Scotland falls into an ecstasy 
of enthusiasm, exclaiming, " I have seen Ossl- 
an's grave, think of that ! " 

Of course Cushendall would not be perfect 
without a rath, and upon that rath, " once upon 
a time," was Court McMartin, where dwelt the 
Lord of the seven glens, and let me tell you how 
he came to be Lord of the seven glens. He was 
but a poor fisherman when one day he saw just 
off the shore of Cushendall a beautiful ship. Its 
IS8 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

poop of gold and sails of purple, while on the 
deck was a man reading in a wondrous book. 
McMartin did not know it, but the man was 
a magician. McMartin was standing on a rock, 
and the man called to him. The portion of the 
rock upon which McMartin stood detached 
itself from the main rock, and was turned 
into a silver boat which sailed over the 
waves to the astrologer. " McMartin,'' said 
he, " it's written that I must take a wife from 
this place; go you to the village and bring her 
to me." 

Then McMartin hastened to his inn house 
and took his own wife, a very pretty young 
woman, but a vixen most pronounced. His con- 
science troubled him a little, but he soothed it 
by saying, *' She'd be much better off than he, 
a poor fisherman, coald ever make her," and off 
he went with her to the magician, but when he 
saw him coming he called out, " McMartin, I 
don't want her, we've shrews enough in our 
country without her," and off he sailed, but first 
threw into the boat a big bag of gold. When 
the little silver boat reached the rock, it became 
a part of the rock again, and McMartin feared 
for the gold, but it remained, and with it he 

159 



A Book of Hours 

purchased the seven glens, and became Lord 
over them. 

Cushendun is the sister village of Cushendall. 
It lacks the beautiful green trees, but has more 
of the open sea, and some very interesting caves 
which the sea has worn into conglomerate. The 
longest of these caves is fifty feet, and forms 
the only approach to a house known as Cave 
House. This solitary house is everywhere sur- 
rounded by perpendicular walls of rock, except 
at the front where it looks upon the sea. " Is 
this the only approach to the house ? " we 
asked of some children near. ** Yes, unless the 
wee pad over the precipice," and the cave en- 
trance looked, and was preferable, to the " wee 
pad." A most delightfully situated place for 
suggestion of smugglers. 

All along the coast walk one sees seaweed 
sea wrack, as it is called, hung to dry, or ex- 
posed in various ways for drying. The gather- 
ing the seaweed was one of the industries of the 
peasants. It was burned for iodine, and a beg- 
garly pittance was obtained from it. That in- 
dustry has lessened, still one sees the wrack, 
and a little song I know, " Sea Wrack," by 
Moira O'Neill, gives a bit of life around it. 
i6o 



From Lough Neag/i to Lough Foyle 

The wrack was dark an* shiny where it floated 

in the sea. 
There was no one in the brown boat but only 

him an* me; 
Him to cut the sea wrack, me to mind the boat. 
An* not a word between us the hours we were 
afloat. 

The wet wrack. 
The sea wrack, 
The wrack was strong to cut. 

We laid it on the gray rocks to wither in the sun. 
An* what should call my lad then, to sail from 

Cushendun? 
With a low moon, a full tide, a swell upon the 

deep. 
Him to sail the old boat, me to fall asleep. 
The dry wrack. 
The sea wrack. 
The wrack was dead so soon. 

There* a fire low upon the rocks to burn the 

wrack to kelp. 
There* a boat gone down upon the Moyle, an* 

sorra one to help! 
Him beneath the salt sea, tne upon the shore, 
By sunlight or moonlight we'll lift the wrack 
no more. 

The dark wrack. 

The sea wrack. 

The wrack may drift ashore, 

i6i 



A Book of Hours 

I shall not desire a more appreciative audi- 
ence than the small one that frequently listened 
to these recitals of mine. The first time that I 
recited this little poem, 'twas to an audience of 
two, mother and daughter; another daughter 
entered just as I ended the lines, and looked 
inquiringly at the others to know why they 
were so moved, and the mother explained as 
though recounting the misadventure of some 
friends, " A pair went gathering sea wrack, and 
he went down." 

" Och, God save us!" cried the newcomer, 
" He was drowned, and she was left." 
These little cabin audiences are not sated with 
entertainment, and appreciation of familiar life 
told in story or verse is keen. 

When one begins the drive from Cushendall 
to Ballycastle, she goes for a few miles through 
the smiling country of the glens, but leaves that 
after awhile for mountain moorlands, and con- 
siderable of the way is through rather bare hill 
country. However, the hills are blushing with 
heather, here and there is the turf-cutting, pro- 
vided you're in turf-cutting season. As I had 
visited the turf-cutting of my own villages, I 
was quite sophisticated and could smile supe- 
162 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

riorly when the Manchester man in the car 
asked the driver if they were draining the moun- 
tain. 

Before one reaches Ballycastle town, there's 
the Margy River to cross, and near it is the 
Franciscan Friary founded by Sorley Boy in 
the sixteenth century; one sees Fair Head, too; 
but all these points are for special excursion 
later on. The legend is that the children of Lir, 
while doomed for centuries to dwell upon the 
seas, spent nine centuries upon the waters, until 
the sound of Christian bells should be heard in 
Ireland. This is an Ulster story, and one of the 
" Three Sorrows of Story." For three hundred 
years they floated on the Moyle. 

Moore's verse of it is — 

Silent f O Moyle, he the roar of thy waters, 
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose. 

While murmuring mournfully, Lir^s only daugh- 
ter 
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. 

Fair Head — and the promontory is fair In- 
deed — is seen for miles, as one walks, sails, or 
drives about the coast. Beautiful as it is in the 
matter of scenery, and remarkable as it is geo- 
logically, there attaches to Fair Head another 

163 



A Book of Hours 

interest. On the north side is a sloping rock, and 
it is on this rock, according to tradition, that the 
three sons of Usnach landed with Deirdre, when 
they returned from Scotland. The greatest of 
Ireland's " Three Sorrows of Story '' is the 
" Fate of the Sons of Usnach," a story that has 
been told by bards of Ireland and Scotland for 
many ages. This, too, is an Ulster story, and 
more classic than many of the Celtic legends. 

The time of the story was in the reign of 
Conor, King of Ulster, in the time of the Red 
Branch Knights, the cycle of Fin McCool and 
his fellow giants. Conor MacNessa, King of 
Ulster, feasted at the house of his story-teller, 
Phelim. While they feasted, word came to 
Phelim that his wife had borne him a daughter. 
Caffa, the Druid, was of the company, and he 
rose up and said, " Let her be called Deirdra 
(Dread), for by reason of her beauty many 
sorrows shall fall on Ulster." 

" Woe to thee, Deirdre I Deirdra, daughter 
of Phelim." 

The nobles were for slaying the child, and 
swords flashed in the air, but Conor MacNessa 
said, " Give her to me for wife." And the 
Druid again warned: 
i6^ 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

King Conor, there's woe for thy pity, this wotti' 

an child born, 
This bud of sweet promise will wound herself 

red with her thorn. 

king, in the future I prophesy evil before thee, 
JVith the life of this child. Wilt thou listen, 

and heed to my story? 

The breath of a babe? or Connaught and Ul- 
ster in sorrow? 

A dozen swords spring from their scabbards and 
flash fierce and bright, 

The child for the fair steel, stretched out her 
small hands in delight, 

Conor laughed; Let her live, and if beauty 
should grant her a dower, 

1 will wed. Toast your queen, ere I hide her 

from fate in a tower. 

Conor put her in a lonely tower with her 
conversation dame, Lavarcum, to watch over 
her. 

Deirdra was beautiful as a dream; her nurse 
fed her romantic young brain with many sweet 
tales, and the girl was lonely for love. One day 

She leaned from the casement and cried: 
" Look, nurse, they have slain a young deer in 

the courtyard below. 
And the raven awaits them. 
My prince shall have skin like yon snow, 

165 



A Book of Hours 

As red as the hlood be his lip, and his hair like 

the raven's dark wingJ' 
** Hush, dearest! '' the woman replied, 
** Hush, dearest, and think on the king/' 

But Deirdra begs to know if there Is a youth 
so pure-skinned, with raven dark hair, and with 
lips blood red. 

** Darling, in Conor's court I've heard of as fair 
a young knight J' 

Deirdra saw and was loved by Naisi, the son 
of Usnach. Naisi and his two brothers rescued 
Deirdra from her prison, and bore her over sea 
to Scotland, but there her beauty was her undo- 
ing, because Scotia's king saw and loved her, 
and Naisi and his brothers and followers made 
war upon him, and defeated him. They then 
fled to Loch Eathaigh, where they lived hap- 
pily by the chase. But Conor, in Ulster, sought 
means to win the brothers back; he offered the 
quest to his most valiant men in the Red Branch, 
and Fergus went to bring them back under his 
warranty. Deirdra begged that they should not 
return, knowing that treachery awaited them, 
but they did not listen. 

The story is full of poetic description of their 
i66 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

life, how they hunted the stag, fished, slept with 
swaying ferns for pillows, and how the cuckoo 
called to them. Deirdra's farewell to Alba is 
very full of beauty. They returned to Ireland, 
landed under Fair Head at Rock Usnach — and 
from there they went on to Conor's palace in 
Armagh. All the time there are entreaties from 
Deirdra that they will heed her, but they heed 
not her dreams, nor warnings. ** I have a sign 
for you, O sons of Usnach, if Conor designs to 
commit treachery on you, or no." 

" What sign is that? " said Naisi. 

" If Conor summon you into the hall where 
are the nobles of Ulster with him, he has no 
mind of treachery; but if you be sent to the 
mansion of the Red Branch there is treachery." 

When they came to the gate, they struck a 
loud stroke with the wooden knocker. The 
doorkeeper asked, "Who is there?" "The 
three sons of Usnach with Deirdra." Conor 
said, " Be lodged in Mansion of Red Branch." 
Deirdra still pressed them to fly, but they would 
not. They had never been guilty of cowardice 
or unmanliness, so they would not fly. They 
were playing chess in the mansion of the Red 
Branch, when Conor sent a messenger to report 

i6y 



A Book of Hours 

if Deirdra were as beautiful as formerly. Lav- 
arcum, Deirdra's old nurse, volunteered to go. 
She kissed them all lovingly, but reproved them 
for playing on chessboard while Conor grieves 
after the loss of Deirdra. *' Make fast doors 
and windows, for an evil deed is to be done this 
night,'* she warns. 

" What news have you? " asked Conor, when 
Lavarcum returned. " Good and bad. Good 
that the sons of Usnach are returned to you. 
Bad — that Deirdra has lost her color and 
shape.** But Conor sent another messenger to 
go spy upon the beaut}^ of Deirdra. None w^ere 
willing, but finally Trendom went. He dared 
not look through the door, so pried until he 
found an open windo^^'. Deirdra saw him, and 
told Naisi, who threw a chessman at him, put- 
ting out his eye. But Trendom had seen Deir- 
dra, and reported her the fairest woman in the 
world. 

Then Conor called his troops together and 
surrounded the house of the Red Branch, and 
set fire to it. "Who are there? Who are ye 
about us? ** called the sons of Usnach, and they 
shouted back, '^ Conor and Ulster! '' 

"Will you break the warranty of Fergus? ** 
i68 



Ff'om Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

** The sons of Usnach shall rue the day when 
they took my wife." 

The sons of Usnach did battle, valiantly 
killing hundreds; they returned to the house, 
locked their shields around Delrdra, then sal- 
lied forth, killing as they went. 

Conor said to his Druid: "Look, if these 
men escape, they will destroy the Ulster men 
forever. Play enchantment upon them, and I 
give you my word, no danger shall be theirs.*' 
The Druid believed him and laid a spell upon 
the sons of Usnach, a clogging sea of invisible 
waves, so that they were as swimming though 
they walked. 

No man dared to approach till their arms 
fell from their hands. 

Then they were taken and Conor commanded 
them to be put to death. No Ulsterman would 
do his bidding, but at last a Norse captain slew 
them. The brothers contended as to the time 
of death, each one desiring to die first that he 
might not see his brothers slain. But Naisi gave 
to the Norseman his magic sword, which could 
cleave all before It, and they knelt down to- 
gether, and with one blow the Norseman struck 
off the three heads. 

i6g 



A Book of Hours 

Deirdra chanted a lament over them, then 
threw herself on Naisi, and died. 

Woe to thee, daughter of P he Urn, woe to thee, 
Deirdra, 

Down below Fair Head there's one of the 
prettiest bits on the coast, Murlough Bay, and 
at the cottage Miss Clarke will give you a cup 
of tea, to rest you. 

There's very much that's pleasant in jour- 
neying alone, but I remember Bonamargy Fri- 
ary as one of the places where Cowper's lines 
came forcibly to mind: 

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude, 

But give me still in my retreat some one whom I 

may whisper, 
** Solitude is sweet! " 

Sorley Boy, the great MacDonnell chieftain, 
founded the friary, and he lies buried here. He 
was the " Yellow Charley " that for many years 
stoutly resisted Elizabeth, and with a following 
of red shanks made some brave stands against 
the Tudors. Sorley Boy had to contend with 
the English, and with the great shane O'Neill, 
himself, who wished to be Lord Paramount in 
j;^o 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

the North. I always like to read that when Eliz- 
abeth finally sent Sorley Boy his patent as Lord 
of the Route, he burned the document before 
his retainers, in Dunluce Castle, swearing that 
what had been won by the sword should never 
be kept by the sheepskin; and I always read with 
sorrow of the day when Sorley Boy, an old man 
of eighty, did allegiance in Dublin to Queen 
Elizabeth's portrait. 

About two miles from Ballycastle in Glen- 
shesk is a relic of the past, known as Goban 
Saer's castle and caves. Rath Goban has a long 
legend attached to it about Goban, but it is less 
interesting to me than the island opposite Bally- 
castle. Rathlin, or ^achray, as it is called by 
the natives, is just the size and shape of Glen- 
shesk, and naturally enough it's believed that 
'twas removed from the Glen and put into the 
sea. It has a rocky shore, in some places four 
hundred and fifty feet above the sea level; al- 
though the nearest point from Fair Head is but 
three miles, it is not safe to enter any point 
except Church Bay, which is seven and one half 
miles from Ballycastle, and you mustn't attempt 
the journey if the sea be rough; you may have 
to stay for days in Rachray Island, an experi- 

171 



A Book of Hours 

ence you would not court. *Twas here, tradition 
says, that Robert Bruce learned his lesson of 
industry from the spider, the seventh trial. 
Bruce resolved once again to renew his efforts 
to gain the Scottish crown, and the great victory 
of Bannockburn followed. 

The men on Rachray Island are very hand- 
some, finely developed men physically, but their 
manners have not softened by contact with civ- 
ilization. 

There's a custom still in vogue in Rachray 
which may interest you. On the last day of the 
year, about seven o'clock in the evening, two 
parties of young men, twenty to thirty in each, 
set out to pay a visit to every house (except 
those of the poor, whom they intend to assist), 
one party taking the upper, the other the lov\^er 
end of the island. Their approach is indicated 
by the blowing of a horn, that the inmates may 
be prepared with whatever offering they choose 
to give. The first who enters the house has a 
dried sheepskin fastened onto his shoulders, 
which is struck with a stick by the one imme- 
diately following, keeping time to a rhyme in 
Irish, which they all repeat, walking around a 
chair placed in the center of the kitchen. A 
772 



From Lough Neagh to hough Foyle 

translation of the words is : " Get up, good wo- 
man, and give us a scon; and let it be well but- 
tered, and if you refuse, there will come crows 
from the back of Knocklayd that will do much 
harm to your poultry." 

After they receive their offering, money, 
wool, or meal, which they afterwards distribute 
to the poor, they cut a small piece off the sheep- 
skin, which they give to the mistress of the 
house as an acknowledgment of her bounty, and 
as an earnest of good luck for the ensuing year; 
and they invoke a blessing on the house and its 
inmates. Coullin is the name given to the above 
ceremony. 

Rachray Island has, too, the Fata Morgana. 
Many have seen on the shore a corps of yeo- 
men drilling, and there have been seen numer- 
ous ships of French fleet, and when others were 
called to witness, they had gone, but, perhaps, 
what has been seen by the most, is the green 
island which rises every seventh year between 
Rachray and Bengore. Many have distinctly 
seen it, adorned with wood, and crowded with 
people selling yarn, and engaged in occupations 
of a fair. 

They say: 

^73 



A Book of Hours 

If earth or stone I 

From verdant Erin's hallowed land 
Were on this magic island thrown, 

Forever fixed it then would stand. 
But when for this some little boat 

In silence ventures from the shore, 
The mermaid sinks, hushed is the note, 

The fairy isle is seen no more. 

This refers to a legend that the enchanted 
isle comes up upon the playing of music by a 
mermaid. 

There's a little poem about Rachray, by 
Moira O'Neill, that I like, and many like it in 
Ireland, too. IVe referred to the roughness and 
strength of the sons of Rachray, and it is quite 
possible that a girl suddenly won by one of these 
sons of Rachray might soliloquize thus: 

Och, what was it got me at all that time 

To promise Fd marry a Rachray man? 

An* now he'll 7tot listen to rason or rhyme, 

He's strivin' to hurry me all that he can. 

" Come on, an' ye he to come on! " says he^ 
" Ye' re hound for the Island, to live wi' me." 

See Rachray Island heyont in the hay, 

An' the dear k?iows what they be doin' out there 

But fishin' an' fightin' an' tearin' away, 

An' who's to hindher, an' what do they care? 

^ It 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

The goodness can tell what *ud happen to me 
When Rachray *ud have me, anee, anee I 

/ might have took Pether from over the hill, 
A dacent poacher, the kind poor hoy : 
Could I keep the ould places about me still, 
Vd never set foot out o* sweet Ballyvoy, 
My sorra on Rachray, the could sea-caves, 
An* blackneck divers, an* weary ould waves! 

ril never win hack now, whatever may fall. 
So give me good luck, for ye*ll see me no more; 
Sure an Island Man is the mischief an* all — 
An* me that never was married before! 

Oh, think o* my fate when ye dance at a fair. 
In Rachray there* s no Christianity there. 

This never failed to please my Irish friends. 
When I said It over to a girl at Ballycastle, I 
said, "Where do you suppose she met him?'' 
" At the Lammas Fair, at Ballywoy," came the 
answer very promptly. 

Carrlck-a-rede Is a name familiar to many. 
It Is a swinging rope bridge eighty feet above 
the chasm between rock and mainland. Mrs. 
Hunter sent her daughter and guest In mall car 
with me, while the son and his guest followed In 
private jaunting car. I never saw bluer sea than 
on this fourth day of July that found me by the 

175 



A Book of Hours 

Moyle. The young people accompanied me to 
a place from which I was to walk to overtake 
my coach. On the way, I met a local incident 
of a sight place. One, two, three, until there 
were at least a dozen small boys running after 
me, and most lugubriously calling, droning, 
" Scramble for a penny, if you want to see 
some fun. Scramble for a penny, if you want to 
see some fun." But I had rounded several cor- 
ners and my car wasn't in sight, I was very 
warm, cross, and in no way disposed to encour- 
age scrambling for pennies. Then I got the car 
on to the Causeway — the grand sight. 

Now a scientific person could tell you all 
about the greenstone, basalt, red ochre, feldspar, 
amygdaloids, and all things other here — ^but I 
can't. It's very wonderful and impressive. I'd 
wished all my life to see the Causeway because 
it's made up of the stepping-stones that Fin 
McCool caused to be placed between Ireland 
and Scotland that his adversary in Scotland 
might come over and be whipped. 

And we come to Dunluce Castle, one of the 

finest ruins in Europe. There is a Banshee here. 

A maid who loved contrary to her father's wish, 

tried to escape on a rope. Both she and lover 

1^6 



From Lough Neagh to Lough Foyle 

were drowned. On stormy nights she's heard 
weeping and wailing in the tiny room known 
as Banshee's Chamber. We pass Portrush, the 
fashionable watering place. Near by Is Cole- 
ralne, famed for lovely Kitty, and 'twas Ly- 
saght's song and the River Bann that allured 
me here. Then, 

To the edge of Lough Foyle itself — 
A Lough hospitable^ 

we have come. 



J77 



SOME IRISH VILLAGES THAT 
I KNOW 



THERE are four villages that I shall try 
to bring to your eyes this hour, villages 
contrasting very sharply one with the 
other. One, a Connaught village, poor, almost 
beyond your imagining, where " squalor, con- 
fused misery and want " abound. Another is a 
region in Wicklow, perhaps I ought not to style 
it village, but it is a group of buildings about 
which is the very atmosphere of old-time ro- 
mance and mystery, Glendalough, beloved, I am 
sure, by every one that has seen the spot, sacred 
to the memory of St. Kevin. Thirdly, there is 
the village of Cushendall, on Red Bay, in 
County Antrim, embowered in flowers, the pret- 
tiest of villages and rich In folklore, and, lastly, 
my own homely village In Derry, with hardly 
a claim to your kind notice. It is not beautiful, 
it has had no celebration by poets, but it Is 
kindly, and I have an affection for it. 

In the getting from one village to another, I 

178 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

may tell of things extraneous to the village life, 
but they will all be things Irish, and will, I 
hope, help to make a background for the Irish 
villages. 

I am sure that no one will challenge my right 
to talk on Irish villages when I say that the vil- 
lage I know best of all is one that I don't know 
at all. It is the village of Lisconnel, in Conne- 
mara, which Miss Barlow has made us know so 
intimately through her " Irish Idylls.'* Had 
fortune, with all her fickleness, thrown over me 
the mantle of story-teller, and had she granted 
me the further grace to choose what stories I 
would tell, I should elect to tell stories of the 
Irish peasant, full of the truth and sympathy 
that mark Miss Barlow's stories. These stories 
of the everyday life In the wild bog lands of 
Connemara, when I first read them, ten years 
and more ago, strongly impressed me with their 
truthful picturing of a life in which I am deeply 
interested, and there has been no reason why I 
should change my opinion during the years. Lis- 
connel Is a cluster of, perhaps, half a score of 
huts, cabins in which you would not house brute 
animals, seven Irish miles from Duffclune, the 
nearest place that resembles a town. The road 

179 



A Book of Hours 

winds over the brown, dreary bog land, once In 
a while brightened by a bit of bog cotton, but 
it is one of the earth's waste places. 

But here in these mud cabins is lived a life 
which has many of the elements of the greater 
life outside. Looking at the village, as a whole, 
it looks like a cluster of hives. The houses are 
builded of stone and mud, and with no plaster. 
They can afford very little mud either from the 
scanty soil, so there is a great deal of unscien- 
tific ventilation. Because there is so little tillable 
soil, they usually select for the house the place 
most unpromising for a crop. For instance, the 
Sheridan's house Is builded on a ledge, and the 
elevation In the middle acts as a watershed 
during a wet season. The cabins are not 
thatched with straw — that Is beyond the means 
of the dweller in Lisconnel — but with rushes, 
tied on and weighted down with stones to pre- 
vent its blowing off. The largest window in Lis- 
connel is nine Inches square. 

Imagine Lisconnel, the dreary waste of 
brown bog land on every side, a very badly kept 
road, with depressions full of water in a wet 
season ; as we face Duffclune, the Pat Ryans, the 
Sheridans, and the Kilfoyles live In cabins on 
i8o 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

the left, and nearly opposite them are the Quig- 
leys, and next beyond, Mad Belle and Big Anne 
share a hut; on the left, farther up on the bog, 
are the homes of Oldy Rafferty and Widow 
McGurk; there*s the roofless house where the 
0*Driscolls used to live, and these, with the 
homes of the Mich Ryans and the Doynes, name 
all the houses in Lisconnel. 

But here, as I said, you find many of the ele- 
ments that are found in bigger communities. 
Here is the Widow McGurk, poor, even rela- 
tively poorer than some of the others. But it 
requires much finesse to get her to accept as- 
sistance. It wouldn't do, for example, to come 
bouncing in as Judy Ryan did one evening, with 
a pailful of potatoes culled cautiously, though 
in no grudging mood, from a slender store (if 
Judy threw back a handful at the last moment, 
it was not her will that consented), and saying, 
" Och, sure, Mrs. McGurk, IVe heard youVe 
run out o' pertates ; why it's starved you must be, 
woman alive, cliver and clane. Here's an odd 
few IVe brought you in the ould bucket, and 
there'd be more only we're getting shortish our- 
selves." 

Judy was immediately informed, with a la- 



A Book of Hours 

mentable disregard of truth, that Mrs. McGurk 
had more pitatls than she could use in a month 
of Sundays, and at the same time given to un- 
derstand, with an impolite absence of circumlo- 
cution, that the sooner she removed herself and 
her ould bucket, the better 'twould be. 

Mrs. Kilfoyle, a dear old woman, I think I 
love her better than anyone else in Lisconnel, 
had that inestimable quality of tact. In Liscon- 
nel they say, " She had a way wit her." She 
would go up the rush-tussocked slope to Mrs. 
McGurk's. She was a light weight, but she was 
less nimble of foot than of wit, and she would 
ask to borrow a jug or a mug. Then after a call 
she would say: " Well, I must be shankin' off 
wid oneself, Mrs. McGurk, and thank you 
kindly, ma'am, sure it's troublln' you I am too 
often." 

** Not at all, not at all," and Mrs. McGurk's 
head rose two inches higher with the conscious- 
ness of conferring a favor, " Don't think to 
mention it, Mrs. Kilfoyle, you're welcome as 
daylight to any sticks of things I've got." 

Then Mrs. Kilfoyle would say: " I suppose 
now, ma'am, you couldn't be takin' a couple o' 
stones o' praties off of us? Ours do be keeping 
182 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

that badly, we can't use them quick enough, and 
you could be paying us back when the new 
ones came In, accordin' as was convenient. If 
you could, rd sent one of the childer up with 
them as soon as I git home. Sorra the trouble 
in it at all, at all, and thank you kindly, Mrs. 
McGurk, and good evenin' to you, ma'am." 
Then trotting down the hill: " I'll bid the lads 
to be stirring themselves. Niver a bit the cra- 
tur's after getting this day." 

Or it might be: " Good evenin', then, Mrs. 
McGurk, and I'll be careful with your jug. I 
was thinking by the way, you maybe wouldn't 
object to the lads lavln' you up a few creels of 
turf now our stack's finished buildin', just to 
keep them quiet, for It's beyond themselves they 
git entirely, if they're not at some job. They 
do have their mother distracted with their divil- 
ments, the little spalpeens." 

But one day the Widow McGurk was raised 
above these mortifications by a wave of afflu- 
ence. An unknown kinsman in the United States 
died, and left a legacy of fifteen shilling. The 
sensation In Lisconnel cannot be described; they 
discussed the legacy early and late. It was an 
almost unanimous sentiment that the money was 

^83 



A Book of Hours 

well come by. Mrs. Quigley indulged in a few 
discouraging remarks about the difficulty there^d 
be In getting the money order paid. There was 
much conflicting advice as to what might be 
done with it. Mrs. McGurk planned a shop- 
ping expedition to the town next day, and it 
was arranged that the Widow Doyne's Stacy 
was to accompany her, and help her home with 
her load, which people understood would con- 
sist mainly of a heavy meal bag. 

Before Mrs. McGurk could start, " she had 
to make a round of calls upon her acquaintance 
to inquire whether she could do e'er a thing for 
them down beyant." This is a long-established 
social observance, which to omit would have 
been a great breach of etiquette. There were 
very few commissions; old Mich Ryan fumbled 
in his pocket, where there sometimes used to be 
pennies, but where there were never any now. 
" Ah, now, fathern, what would you be want- 
in','* said his daughter-in-law. 

" Tobaccy." But nobody found the pennies 
for the tobaccy. 

All that November day the neighbors, when 
they met, talked about Mrs. McGurk and her 
expedition, wondering how much Corr would 
1S4 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

charge her a stone for the meal, and when dark 
came down over the hamlet, all sorts of con- 
jectures were rife as to what could be detaining 
them, perhaps this, perhaps that, all fraught 
with more or less danger to the adventurous 
shoppers, but at last Mrs. McGurk appeared. 
Her shopping had been done on liberal lines^ 
to judge by the basket, which she set down on 
the first dyke sufficiently flat-topped. The first 
parcel that came out was the cause of the ex- 
pedition's late return. Mrs. McGurk had ac- 
cidentally left the tobaccy for Mich Ryan on 
a counter, and had not missed it till she was a 
long mile and a half on her way home, so she 
trudged the dreary way back that the old man 
might not be disappointed, and happy it was 
for old Mich that she had been so kind. He 
had been waiting expectant all day. When 
his daughter Biddy offered to fetch him down 
his little old black pipe, he said, " No, I'll just 
be keeping the feel of it in my hand to-night." 
There were other delights in the basket, 
sugar-sticks for the children; and it was on this 
occasion that a reconciliation was cemented be- 
tween Mrs. McGurk and Judy Ryan, cemented 
by the sugar-sticks bestowed on the youthful Pat 

1S5 



A Book of Hours 

Ryan. There was a large blue bottle with a red- 
and-yellow label, which contained a liniment 
warranted to cure the very worst of rheumatics. 
This was to be divided between Mrs. Quigley 
and Peter Sheridan. There was a coarse, warm 
woolen skirt for Stacy, knitting yarn for Peg 
Sheridan, who was lame and lost " widout a 
bit of work in her hand." But what gave the 
greatest pleasure was a pound of tea and four 
of sugar which she bestowed on dear old Mrs. 
Kilfoyle, who sat with the parcels in her lap, 
exclaiming, " Musha, then, well to goodness, 
sure, woman, dear, oh, now begruah, why, what 
at, why what at all? " 

For herself, Mrs. McGurk had bought a pen- 
'orth of salt. She decided that " meal was mere 
brash, and a hot pitati's a dale tastier any day." 
But IVe not done half justice in this poor tell- 
ing to the generosity of Mrs. McGurk and the 
gratitude of her beneficiaries. 

I should like to tell you of old Mrs. Kilfoyle, 
something about her when she was pretty Bessie 
Joyce, and her family came as strangers to Lis- 
connel from a tidy little farm in County Clare. 
Her father, Andy Joyce, had a predilection for 
seeing things decent and in order, and he so 
iB6 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

improved his little farm that the landlord 
turned him out, and appropriated the improve- 
ments to his own use. 

And were there time, I should like to give 
you a glimpse of Lisconnel on a wet day in July, 
when all the potatoes are done, and the village 
is fasting except for the coarse yellow Indian 
meal, " brash." What wonder that their tem- 
pers are a bit worn, and that Mrs. Quigley and 
Mrs. Brian Kilfoyle, the daughter-in-law of my 
old friend, were at crisscross. 

" Mrs. Brian, Mrs. Brian, Mrs. Brian, 
ma'am," Mrs. Quigley called out, very audibly 
exasperated, " FU trouble you, ma'am, to speak 
to your Tim there. He's just after slapping a 
big sod o' turf over the dyke into the middle 
of me chickens, that went as nare doing slaugh- 
ter on the half of them as ever I saw. The cra- 
turs were that terrified, I give you me word, they 
lep up ten feet standin' off of the ground." 

"Tim," called Mrs. Kilfoyle, "you'll sup 
sorrow wid a spoon of grief if I hear of your 
doin' any thin' agin to Mrs. Quigley's chuckens." 
There the incident would have ended amicably, 
had not Mrs. Quigley remarked, to nobody in 
particular, " Begob, it's a quare way some peo- 

187 



A Book of Hours 

pie have of bringing up their childer to mis- 
chievous httle pests." 

Then the quarrel began in full force. Mrs. 
Quigley had to stand out in the wet, so she had 
really the worst of it, as Mrs. Brian could fling 
her shots from her own house. The sharpness 
of the contention may be inferred from the fact 
that when routed by a heavier downpour, she 
scuddered off toward her own dwelling, the last 
utterance which she gave the wet winds was, 
" May the divil sail away wid the half of yous," 
and the next blast bore the antiphonal response, 
" And may he sail away wid you, too^ ma'am." 

I could talk to you an entire hour of the joys 
and sorrows, the tragedies that come to the peo- 
ple of Lisconnel, but Glendalough, the " garden 
of Ireland," calls. 

It was from Dublin that I took the journey 
to Glendalough, partly by train and partly by 
jaunting car. A very pretty journey was this to 
Rathdrum, skirting the coast for many miles; 
we had fine views of Dublin Bay. 

O Bay of Dublin, my heart youWe troublin\ 

Arrived at Rathdrum, a long, long jaunting- 
car ride takes one to Glendalough, to me a place 
i88 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

of absolute enchantment. When I returned 
from my first visit to Ireland, I was asked many 
times, "What did you like best?" I answered 
truly when I said, " I would sooner give over 
all memories rather than forget Glendalough." 

Thackeray, who went laughing through Ire- 
land, saw many things with the humorist's eye, 
but he was serious enough at Glendalough. 
This is what he says: " I think the Irish scenery 
just like the Irish melodies — sweet, mild, and 
sad, even in sunshine. You can neither repre- 
sent one nor the other by words " — and that I 
know too sadly well of Glendalough. Glenda- 
lough is made up of little churches, seven in all, 
of a Round Tower and a very ancient old cross. 
This combination is one of the many delightful 
bits in Glendalough, it has two lakes — " valley 
of the two lakes " is what the name means — and 
it has mountains and streams ; the tiny churches 
are beautifully softened by time, and ivy-grown ; 
romance and antiquity abide here. ** Multitu- 
dinous Glendalough, the Rome of the western 
world," are the terms used by one who described 
it in the year 800. 

St. Kevin, the founder of the seven churches 
of Glendalough, was descended from royal fam- 

i8g 



A Book of Hours 

ily patrimony, not far away from Rathdrum. 
The date of his birth is not known; he died in 
6 1 8. Shortly after his ordination as a priest he 
withdrew to Glendalough; here he dwelt seven 
years as a hermit. " On the northern shore of 
the lake, he dwelt in a hollow tree, on the south- 
ern shore in a very narrow cave, to which there 
was no access but by boat; a perpendicular rock 
overhangs it from above." A shepherd discov- 
ered his retreat here, and soon thousands came 
to visit him. They built him an oratory which 
soon became too small; then at the bidding of 
the angel, erected the monastery of the valley 
of the two lakes. There is an endless legend re- 
garding St. Kevin. The one most constantly 
connected with him is that when he fled from 
the world he was followed by a beautiful maid, 
Kathleen. Her love for him must have been 
most unselfish. She loved him so devotedly that 
she begged to be permitted not even to live in 
sight of him, but " to look upon his shadow, 
to hear not even his voice, but its echo, promis- 
ing at the same time that she would lie like a 
dog at his feet, take penance for his sins, as well 
as her own, and even in prayer forget her own 
soul for the good of his." An account found in 
igo 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

the authentic life of the saint says that he 
scourged the forward young person with nettles. 
Kathleen really seems the most admirable of the 
two; you all know that when she followed St. 
Kevin across the lake to the cell, he pushed her 
off the rock into the water. 

A prettier legend is that once when St. Kevin 
put his hand through the opening of the cell, 
a blackbird dropped her eggs into it, and St. 
Kevin never stirred hand or arm till the eggs 
were hatched. There is another story that once 
when King Branduff was hunting the boar, he 
found the saint praying, while a crowd of tame 
birds sang on his shoulders and hands. Legends 
like these are of interest, because they explain 
the bird's, which, in religious symbolism, give 
one of his attributes. 

Moore's poem which tells the legend begins : 

By that lake whose gloomy shore 
Skylark never warbles o'er; 

and it has been accepted as a reason that the 
tragedy of Kathleen's death was followed by a 
larkless condition, but larks are always more 
wont to carol over meadows and fields than a 
lake in a rocky dell. But here is another reason 

igi 



A Book of Hours 

why, it IS said, the skylark does not warble over 

Glendalough. When the seven churches were 

building, the skylarks used to call the men to 

their work every morning; the song of the lark 

was a signal for them to begin labor. When 

work was at an end St. Kevin declared that no „ 

other lark was worthy to succeed those pious j 

birds who had helped in the building of the 

churches. 

So leave legends, for a little, but one can't 
leave legends for long in Glendalough; let us 
see what's to be seen. An ancient gateway leads 
one to the cluster of churches, crosses, and 
Round Tower. This Round Tower is presum- 
ably of the tenth century. Backed by the green 
hills. Its position is striking. St. Kevin's kitchen 
is so called because the pepole believed for a 
long time that the belfry was a chimney. Petrle, 1 

the learned antiquarian and archaeologist, says 
there is no reason to doubt that this served St. 
Kevin for house and oratory, and that his suc- 
cessors added the belfry ; that would fix the date 
of the building in the early seventh century. 

I had succeeded In getting to St. Kevin's 
kitchen without a guide, though there were 
plenty enough who had offered their services. 
ig2 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

But an old man opened it to my friends and me, 
and told us the most delightfully extravagant 
tales. At last he said, " Where do you live, 
when you're at home? " " In America/' " Oh, 
God bless ye I Come in here." So he let us into 
the sacristy, and lifting up a slab, he gave us 
some bits of shale. " There now, ye'll never be 
shipwrecked and ye'll never have the tooth- 
ache." I bestowed my pieces upon an Irish 
friend, who will, I trust, enjoy, in consequence, 
immunity from those widely divergent evils. 
The old fellow told such delightful yarns that 
I gave him a fee entirely disproportionate to 
the service he had rendered us, and as each of 
my friends gave him something, he saw that it 
wasn't an empty purse, or unwillingness to pay, 
that had kept us from having a guide, and his 
curiosity was excited. He called me back as we 
left the little oratory and asked, " Why didn't 
yes take a guide? " But if ever you go to Glen- 
dalough, and want a guide, let me entreat you 
to ask for Jack Barrett. Thackeray says that 
although his guide wore a ragged coat he had 
the manners of a gentleman. Jack Barrett 
couldn't have guided Thackeray in 1842, but 
he has the manners of a gentleman. Later in 



A Book of Hours 

the day we were trying to find St. Rhefert's and 
had taken the wrong path. A voice called, ** La- 
dies, that's the wrong path; ye might wander 
about all night; come back this way to the stile." 
He helped us over the stile, then proffered his 
services as guide, spoke of his qualifications, and 
the eminent men he had shown about. " But," 
I said, " we don't question your great acquaint- 
ance with all these things, but we thought we'd 
enjoy going alone." " Then I'll not afflict my- 
self upon you further," he said, and with a very 
courtly wave of the hat he was gone, after giv- 
ing us direction how to find St. Rhefert's Church, 
and, subsequently, the lake. 

St. Rhefert's Church, the burial place of the 
O'Toole's and, according to tradition, of St. 
Kevin himself, is charming. We came at last 
to the lake and employed a boatman to take us 
over to St. Kevin's bed. Our boatman told us 
that no lady can be drowned on the lake, for so 
St. Kevin prayed after the death of Kathleen. 

But to leave Glendalough without mention- 
ing King O'Toole would be to leave it most 
incomplete. He was not z contemporary of St. 
Kevin, although legend associated them to- 
gether. When King O'Toole had become an 
jg4 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

old man, one of his chief amusements was to 
watch his geese swim, and he had one old gan- 
der that used to dive down into the lake on 
Friday and bring him up a fish for his dinner. 
'Twas a great grief when the bird became too 
old to fly. He met St. Kevin one day, and told 
him of his sorrow. The saint asked, " What 
will you give me if I make him fly for you 
again? " " Why, all the land he flies over, even 
supposing he flies over the whole glen." With 
great exactness, he did fly over the entire glen, 
and King O'Toole put a handsome face on it, 
made over the entire valley forever and a day 
to the saint. All this nonsense is put into a very 
rollicking song, which I dare say you may have 
heard sung. But I wish you might hear it sung 
in the rich, pleasant voice of one of my Irish 
friends. The saintly and royal dialogists are 
made to talk in a very free and easy way, and 
more than once the merry song has beguiled the 
way when IVe been questing for folklore, not 
in Leinster, but in Ulster. 

And having given you a glimpse of a village 
in Connaught, and a peep at a nook in Leinster, 
I shall now while you away to a region in Ul- 
ster, and I am fancying that we have the magic 

195 



A Book of Hours 

steed, Bohalaun, who can convey us In a minute 
from the glen In County WIcklow to the region 
of glens In County Antrim. 

Bohalaun will take us first to Glenoe, an out- 
of-the-way little place where few enough tour- 
ists go, but here^s where they used to say, " the 
grace for light, ^* then from Glenoe he will take 
us to Larne, and along the Antrim Coast Road. 
Over this fine road he will fly, and his silver 
hoofs will leave scarcely a shining mark. As 
we fly on, we shall catch glimpses of the bluest 
of seas on our right; It Is the Moyle, the name 
given to the Northern Channel between Ireland 
and Scotland; Its blueness Is something that we 
cannot fail to remark, although Bohalaun Is go- 
ing at such a tremendous pace, outpacing the 
very wind. 

The village to which we are hastening Is 
Cushendall, which name means *' foot of the 
Dall,'* and it is at the foot of the Dall River; 
it is also on the Red Bay, and is guarded by the 
mountains, Lurlgethan and Trostan. A branch 
of the Gulf Stream enters Red Bay and sensibly 
tempers the climate, so that roses and fuchsias 
grow luxuriously; then this is the entrance to 
the Glen Region, the Seven Glens of Antrim, 
ig6 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

and it was at Cushendall where dwelt McMar- 
tln, the Lord of the Seven Glens, and I shall 
like to tell you how he came to be Lord of the 
Seven Glens. His court used to be on a fairy 
rath, to which we will go, and as we go I will 
tell you about McMartin. He was but a poor 
fisherman, when one day he saw, just off the 
shore from Cushendall, a beautiful ship, its 
prow of gold, and its sails of purple, while on 
the deck was a man reading a wondrous book. 
McMartin did not know it, but the man was a 
magician. McMartin was standing on a rock, 
and the man called to him. The portion of 
rock on which McMartin stood detached itself 
from the main rock, and was turned into a 
silver boat which sailed over the waves to the 
astrologer. 

" McMartin," said he, " It's written that I 
must take a wife from this place; go you to the 
village and bring her to me." 

Then McMartin hastened to his own home, 
and took his own wife, a very pretty young wom- 
an, but a vixen most pronounced. His conscience 
troubled him a little, but he soothed it by saying 
that she'd be much better off than he a poor 
fisherman could ever make her, and oft he went 



A Book of Hours 

with her to the magician ; but when the magician 
saw him coming, he called out, " McMartin, I 
don't want her, we've shrews enough in our 
country without her," and off he sailed, but first 
threw into the boat a big bag of gold. When 
the little silver boat reached the rock, it became 
a part of the rock again, and McMartin feared 
for the gold, but it remained, and with it he 
purchased the Seven Glens and became Lord 
over them. 

Now you know how the Seven Glens came 
into McMartin's possession, perhaps you would 
like to go to one or two of them, as they are 
among the chasms of Cushendall, and the one 
most frequently visited is Glen a-uff, beautiful 
with its waterfalls of various shapes and heights, 
and hazels, and larches, and ferns. 

Another glen, not so picturesque, nor so much 
visited, I love better, and that is Glen Dun. 
*' Lone Glen Dun and the wild glen flowers " 
is very sweet to me. 

Up in Glen Dun, in the cleft root of an oak 
is an old altar; it is an old runic stone; the 
inscription is indecipherable. Here for years 
was the worshiping place of the Roman Cath- 
olics of this region, until a benevolent gentlc- 
jg8 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

man gave them a chapel. But they still come 
here for missions, and when I was there several 
years ago, the place had not the bare look that 
its picture shows; the trees and shrubs were in 
leaf and blossom and there were garlands hung 
about, and the way to the altar was strewn with 
moss. 

It does not seem inappropriate that in Glen 
Dun I should say to you a song of Glen Dun, 
written by the sweet songstress of this glen re- 
gion, Moira O'Neill. Her Irish home is not 
three miles away; she has made this region hap- 
pier for me by her singing, and I am deeply in 
her debt for the songs which interpret so truth- 
fully the life and scenes of this part of Ireland. 
She has with her poetry done for the Glens of 
Antrim what Jane Barlow's tales have done for 
Connemara. 

Sure this is blessed Erin an* this the same glen, 

The gold is on the whin-bush, 

The watcher sings again, 

The Fairy Thomas in flower — an* what ails my 

heart then? 
Flower o* the May, 
Flower o* the May, 

What about the May time, an* he far away! 

igg 



A Book of Hours 

Summer loves the green glen, 
The white bird loves the sea, 
An* the wind must kiss the heather top, an* the 

red hell hides a bee; 
As the bee is dear to the honey-flower, so one is 

dear to me. 
Flowers o* the rose, 
Flowers o* the rose, 
A thorn pricked me one day, but nobody knows. 

The bracken up the braeside has rusted in the 
air. 

Three birches lean together, so silver-limbed an* 
fair, 

Och, golden leaves are flying fast, but the scar- 
let wan is rare. 

Berry o* the roan. 

Berry o* the roan, 

The wind sighs among the trees, but I sigh alone. 

I knit beside the turf fire, I spin upon the wheel. 

Winter nights for thinkin* long. 

Round runs the reel. 

But he never knew, he never knew that here for 

him I kneel. 
Sparkle o* the fire, 
Sparkle o* the fire, 
Mother Mary, keep my love, an* send me my 

desire. 

200 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

Moira O'Nelirs Irish home used to be at 
the Cushendun, the sister village of Cushendall, 
but at the time that I was exploring the glens 
and singing her songs, and saying them In cab- 
ins to the peasants, she was far, far away In the 
Northwest, In the Canadian Rockies. She mar- 
ried a young man who wished to try ranching 
in the far West. 

Ochj what's this is deeper than the sea? 
An! what's this is stronger nor the seaf 
Where the call is ** all or none '' 
An^ the answer ^' all for one " 
Then we he to sail away across the sea. 
Lone Glen Dun an' the wild glen flowers, 
Little ye know if the prairie is sweet. 
Roses for miles and redder than oins, 
Spring here undher the horses' feet; 
Ay, an' the black-eyed gold sun- flowers, 
Not as the glen flowers, small an' sweet, 
Wathers d Moyle, I hear ye callin' 
Clearer for half o' the world between, 
Antrim hills an' the wet rain fallin' 
fVIules ye are nearer than snow-tops here: 
Dreams o' the night an' a night wind callin' — 
What is the half o' the world between? 

Years ago, when I was first under the spell 
of her charming verses, I wrote to MoIra 

201 



A Book of Hours 

O'Neill expressing my delight in her glen 
poems, and I spoke of myself apologetically as 
an obtrusive stranger. After much traveling of 
our letters, for we were half the world away 
from each other, there came a reply from Moira 
O'Neill which began delightfully, " My dear 
obtrusive stranger, I wish there were more of 
you." 

With Its flowers, its glens. Its mountain and 
sea, and Its stories and songs, Cushendall is an 
ideal place for a prolonged tarry, and I am al- 
ways looking forward to the time when I may 
tarry here for a season at least. But If I wait 
too long before I take you to my own home, you 
win put It down to Inhospitallty and a lack of 
desire to entertain you, and I shall bid you come 
at once. 

I shall not take Bohalaun as the medium for 
traveling; he goes too swiftly, and we should 
miss much that Is Interesting, as Bohalaun would 
prance from Cushendall to my village ; It Is not 
more than fifty or sixty miles, but I shall take 
you around the Antrim Coast, past Bally-castle 
and Glenshesh, the famous swinging bridge at 
Carrlch-a-rede, by the Giant's Causeway with 
its remarkable basaltic columns, to Portrush, 

202 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

thence to Coleraine, and then to our market 
town, Magherafret. In all probability, we shall 
have missed one of the two trains that go daily 
to my village, so we shall go over by jaunting 
car, and as we drive, I will tell you of the irreg- 
ularity of our railway service — I have yet to 
know why they call the afternoon train " the 
quarter past four train " — it leaves at ten min- 
utes to five. The station master has, as you may 
imagine, little enough to do in this out-of-the- 
way place, but he holds his office in high esteem. 
One day last spring, a vain hope to find a gen- 
eral time-table took me over to the little station, 
and I greeted Mr. Bell cordially, " How are 
you, Mr. Bell?*» "How do you do?" Mr. 
Bell returned, " your tongue I know, but your 
face and name are strange." " I am Miss 
Thompson. I was here a long time some years 
ago." " Not Miss Thompson out of Amer- 
ica?" "Yes." "Shake hands again." Then to 
make talk, I said, " I am very sorry you didn't 
remember me, Mr. Bell, you were one of the 
first persons for whom I inquired." Then in- 
deed did I feel my inconsequence, when Mr. 
Bell said grandly, " Although we were fast 
friends, we didn't get speaking much together, 

203 



A Book of Hours 

and what with this public life and all the bus- 
tle and stir, I can't be remembering every- 
body/' 

Now here, in this village, I am at home in 
every corner, and almost by every fire. When 
I come in from a round, and am asked where 
IVe been, it is very likely I'll say, " I climbed 
to Mitchell's forth, then went by M'Kevoon's 
loaming, crossed Sally's fort stick over the burn, 
and came home by Barclay's meadow." " And 
did you get seeing anyone?" ** I met the Mc- 
Geehan's ones and had a * crack ' with Mary 
Hagan." 

It is in a house like this, a two-cornered 
thatched-roofed house, that I live with Mary- 
anne and Rose, in whom some of my friends 
are most kindly interested. Here we sit by the 
peat fire, here the neighbors come on their kail- 
yee — ^which is an evening visit. 

After the friends are gone. Rose will inquire, 
" Had you good crack the night? " And I usu- 
ally answer, " Och, the best." Any captious re- 
marks are not encouraged, because I remember 
once when I said, referring to a man who usu- 
ally talks well, " Francis was very bad crack the 
night," Rose remarked, *' You're not alwaj^s 
20^ ■ - 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

good crack yourself." The justice of the rebuke 
I was not slow to grant. 

As I stand in the half-door, and look across 
to County Antrim, Slemlsh Mountain Is conspic- 
uous, and it Is simply in following the rigid eti- 
quette of the village that I remark on Slemlsh, 
** Slemlsh Is clear to-day," or ** Slemlsh has a 
cap on to-day." We have a mountain of our 
own, Slleve Galllon, but we cannot see it from 
either of our two windows. 

To the casual comer to Curr, It seems a pro- 
saic enough village, but I know where the fairy 
raths are, and where Reuben's Glen Is. Reuben 
was the man that could lay devils, and he lived 
in a beautiful glen; I know where Callan Mor's 
grave is on the side of Slleve Galllon, and I can 
show you the place where the giant queen over 
In Antrim had her workmen begin digging 
among the mountain so that she could see across 
to her grand friend in County Donegal ; but the 
workmen all took a sore In their fingers, and the 
work stopped. I can show you where Betsey 
Stewart used to live. She was a woman that 
could blink, she could charm the cows so that 
they wouldn't give milk, and she could turn her- 
self into a hare, and once when she had the hare 

20S 



A Book of Hours 

shape on her, James Woodhouse shot her, and 
we know he shot her that night, because when 
she went into the house with the woman shape 
on her, she limped, and she limped ever after. 

There is much wisdom that may be learned 
before a peat fire. Here's the cutting of peat, 
and may I tell you while we sit before the pleas- 
ant turf fire which is so bright and warm, how 
It came about that the peasants burn peat? It 
must be remembered that one of the theories to 
account for fairies is that they are fallen angels. 
Before the days of St. Patrick, the only fuel the 
Irish had was wood. St. Patrick's servant was 
one day returning home, and he met a little man 
in red. " If you will ask St. Patrick something, 
I will tell you something in return," said the 
little man. Next morning at Mass, at the Ele- 
vation, for the celebrant must answer any ques- 
tion put to him at that time, the servant called 
out that he had something to ask. " What 
wretched man called out? " The servant put the 
question that the little man in red had asked: 
" Had fallen angels any chance of salvation?" 
" You must go dig your grave," said St. Pat- 
rick, " because when he hears the answer, he 
will kill you. Don't forget to lay log and shovel 
206 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

crosswise over the grave when youVe done: 
There is no hope for fallen angels! " 

The servant dug his grave, and lay the log 
and shovel crosswise, as directed, and then the 
little man In red appeared. When he heard the 
answer, he tried to get at the servant, who v/as 
protected by the cross, and then the fairy said: 
" Well, I must keep my word. Go to your bog, 
throw up some turf. Let It dry In the sun, it 
will make good fire for you." The little red 
man disappeared. The servant got out of the 
grave and told to St. Patrick what the fairy 
said. They tried the turf and have been using 
it ever since. It Is pleasant as one enjoys the 
warmth and cheer of the turf fire to think we 
are indebted to a fairy for the comfort. 

The talk of my friends in Curr is on all kinds 
of subjects. I like to hear Dan, a handsome boy 
of twenty, talk of flowers and birds, both of 
which he loves from the very gentleness of his 
nature. " All the birds In the world come round 
my house," he says. " Last night I dreamed 
that my room was full of birds, and the dream 
was true, for when I waked they were all sing- 
ing about my house." 

I can give you some. Indeed, I can give you 

20J 



A Book oj Hours 

many instances of poetic idiom among my 
friends, but they do not all talk poetically. 
When Sarah McWilliams came to invite me to 
dine with her, this was the form which her in- 
vitation took: "I cut the head off a hen last 
night, and I hope you'll come over to-morrow " 
— which I rightly interpreted as an invitation 
to dinner. Meg Barclay's speech is extremely 
racy of the soil, Meg is mbst unpoetic. I re- 
member once when ever so many of us were sit- 
ting on the ditch, which I have always to remind 
my hearers is a bank, one glorious June evening 
when the mountains were beautiful, that Meg, 
entirely oblivious of all the beauty, began to 
tell us what fine " crack " a man was whom 
chance had brought to her father's house the 
night before. " He was telling us about the cut- 
tin'-up of ould Mis' Palmer." Now it must 
not for a moment be supposed that old Mis' 
Palmer had been guilty of any indiscretion 
which Meg denominated " a cuttin'-up." It 
was, rather, an autopsy, the harrowing details 
of which I will spare you, but my medical 
friends beg me again and again to tell them of 
the cuttin'-up of ould Mis' Palmer. 

Now that it is all over, and happily over, I 
208 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

can tell you of a slight misadventure that came 
to me in the days of last spring. I was so care- 
less as to lose my rings. After vain searching 
for them, my peasant friends were incredulous. 
I couldn't have lost them all — one might go, 
but all! I had put them away and searching 
would not reveal them. I looked, and so did 
they, but no amount of searching discovered the 
rings. While I tried to act as usual, I was de- 
pressed. I forbade my entertainers mentioning 
the loss. After the first anxious search, and their 
uttering of, "How lamentable!'* and sundry 
exclamations, they had appeared to put it from 
their minds, and obeyed to the letter my com- 
mand that the subject was never to be named. 
One evening I said, " Maryanne, will you still, 
when you're sweeping, think about my rings? " 
And Maryanne turned about swiftly, with the 
tears flashing in her eyes : " There's never a mo- 
ment when I'm not thinking of them. How my 
heart aches I It was the other night that I sent a 
request to St. Anthony, and if he doesn't restore 
them I don't know what else to do." My own 
belief was that they had somehow fallen on to 
the earth floor of my room, been swept into the 
kitchen, and that the ducks, chickens, and other 

20g 



A Book of Hours 

birds had swallowed my diamonds and pearls. 
It is now extremely funny as I recall how bit- 
terly I quoted over and over again, " Irks care 
the full-cropped bird? " as I looked at the fowl. 

One day, just a week after their loss, I found 
them, exactly where I had put them. With 
them, I rushed to Maryanne in the kitchen. 
" Seel " I exclaimed. " It's never your rings I " 
she cried out, and then she rushed out to tell the 
others. " She's found the rings ! She's found 
her rings ! " Such prayerfulness I've never 
heard as the old mother's, " Thanks be to God; 
praise the Father ! " and Rose's exclaiming, 
" St. Anthony is good. It's miraculous ! " 

For a week my poor friends were miserable 
through my own carelessness, but never a word 
was said, and many might have been said about 
reproving me. When I had left them Rose 
wrote about the matter : " Indeed you did more 
than well, you had good patience and was pleas- 
ant with us, and it was hard on you, for we were 
everyone black at the heart about them. And 
beside the loss it was I always thought you'd 
look back to Ireland with a frown, now I know 
you'll look back with a smile." 

The leaving these dear friends of mine is 

210 



Some Irish Villages That I Know 

always sad. Rose was weeping copiously, and I 
could only comfort her by saying: " Remember, 
Fm coming back to have a donkey car and ride 
all over Ireland In It." Hugh Patrick McNally 
Is a little boy of five whose ambition Is to grow 
big enough to be my donkey boy. He bestowed 
on me a lock of his very fair hair; the shop- 
keeper, Mary Higgins, gave me oranges and 
biscuits. The Dummy — did I know her name 
I would not so designate the deaf and dumb 
woman that came to the station bringing me a 
shamrock. Poor woman, poorer than you can 
conceive, " llvin* her lone " In a cabin not far 
from mine, she brought me a poetic gift at 
parting. Everybody brought me something; 
very humbly they presented the things, proffer- 
ing them through Rose, asking her first if she 
thought rd take offense. 

Now I will close with " Back to Ireland,'* by 
Moira O'Neill, a song which my Irish friends 
liked best of all I read to them. 

Oily tell me, will I ever win to Ireland again ^ 
Astore I from the far North-Westf 

Have we given all the rainbows, an* green woods 
an* rain, 
For the suns an* the snows o* the West? 

211 



A Book of Hours 

" Them that goes to Ireland must thravel night 

an* day, 
An* them that goes to Ireland must sail across 

the say. 
For the length of here to Ireland is half the 

world away — 
An* you*ll lave your heart behind you in the 
West. 
Set your face for Ireland, 
Kiss your friends in Ireland, 
But lave your heart behind you in the West,** 

On a dim an* shiny mornin* the ship she comes 
to land. 
Early, oh, early in the mornin* , 
The silver wathers o* the Foyle go slidin* to the 
strand, 
Whisperin* , " Ye*re welcome in the mornin* J* 
There*s darkness on the holy hills I know are 

close aroun* , 
But the stars are shinin* up the sky, the stars are 

shinin* down. 
They make a golden cross above, they make a 

golden crown, 
An* meself could tell ye why — in the mornin*. 
Sure an* this is Ireland, 
Thank God for Ireland! 
I*m comin* back to Ireland the mornin*. 



212 



